Gems of tomorrow
by WatsonSword
Summary: Eyebrows are raised when three experiments Jumba does not remember creating show up on his doorstep. Little does the Pelekai household know, that these creatures may hold the key to saving galactic civilization as we know it.
1. Chapter One

Lilo and Stitch

Gems of Tomorrow

By WatsonSword

I was suddenly hit by a wave of inspiration the other day and had to write this. Unfortunately, this means that I am now working on two fics simultaneously, those being _Empire of The Pacific_, and this one, _Gems of Tomorrow_. As a result, my updates for either story will be somewhat infrequent as I'm writing for both at once.

Before you begin reading, I have a few notes on what I imagine the voices of my new characters to be like. To have effect, I have listed several voice actors/actresses and their previous roles to better let you imagine exactly what their voices sound like.

Emerald: Tera Strong, who also voiced Stitch's Bujibu Angel, voices Emerald. Emerald's voice is just different enough from Angel's so that you could tell them apart if, and only if, they were speaking to each other.

Ruby: Anna Garduno voices Ruby. Her previous role was as Palmon in the first season of Digimon.

Sapphire: Saffron Henderson voices Sapphire. He did Gohan in the very first season of DragonballZ.

* * *

_Somewhere between the Orion and Centauri constellations._

A small gray shuttle looking like little more than a box with engines attached to the back made a barrel roll through space and then righted itself, flying away at full throttle. One of its engines was shot and was now a blackened piece of metal pouring out smoke.

In a slow pursuit was a gargantuan black ship shaped like an arrowhead with a split tip. Turrets popping up out of every nook and cranny in the ships hull each fired a barrage of green plasma balls at the escaping shuttle.

Inside the cockpit of the shuttle, a very different and distraught grand councilwoman of the galactic federation clenched her teeth as she swerved her shuttle every which way to avoid the blasts coming from her pursuers.

The grand councilwoman no longer looked grand in her cheap cockpit. She was dressed in a plain white tunic with long sleeves and a turtleneck, along with her plain white baggy pants with elastic ankles. Her face was a mess of scars and her left eye was now a circular metal plate with what looked to be a camera lens just in the center.

The grand councilwoman yanked back her control stick turning her shuttle ninety degrees straight up. The chasing ship did not turn to follow, but its turrets kept their lock and kept firing.

The grand councilwoman threw her whole body too and fro in her seat as she desperately tried to dodge blast after blast. But one shot skimmed the roof of her shuttle, tearing open the plating to reveal the electronics within.

"Warning!" the shuttle computer sounded. "Hull damage on section seven."

"Would you shut up!" The grand councilwoman yelled at the computer while still desperately trying to dodge the blasts from her pursuer.

"Calculations complete. Ready for hyperspace jump." The computer sounded again.

"At last!" The grand councilwoman sighed with relief. She reached down below her control panel, grabbed a handle attached to a striped bar in the floor beneath her control panel, yanked it out, turned it a quarter turn, and shoved it back in.

The shuttle's engines glowed a bright white, and the shuttle shot off into hyperspace, leaving a glowing purple shockwave in its wake.

Inside the bridge of the massive black ship was a perfectly ordered and symmetrical mess of black metal and computer consoles. In the giant seat overlooking the main viewscreen, Gantu sat and slammed his fist into the armrest.

"Blitznak! She went into hyperspace." Gantu shouted, leaning forward. "All hands brace for impact!"

That was when a dull gray triangle, about four inches across, pinned to Gantu's chest lit up to a bright yellow.

Everyone on the bridge turned to look as Gantu dropped out of his chair and fell on the floor, putting his hands to his neck, writhing and growling in pain.

The triangle returned to its previous dull gray and Gantu released his neck and gasped for air.

A familiar voice was heard from behind Gantu's seat. "I give the orders on this ship not you!"

Gantu rolled over to look back at his seat as two thin metal legs reached around from behind it and grabbed hold of the top. The metal legs hoisted themselves up and soon two more pairs were revealed. Like a giant robotic daddy-longlegs, they lifted themselves up, attached to a metal breastplate on the chest of Dr. Jacques Von Hamsterviel, and sat their master down on Gantu's Former seat. The legs then extended outward and rested themselves on the armrests of the chair.

"Now," Hamsterviel said, "All hands brace for impact."

Everyone on the bridge turned back to their consoles and grabbed the edges of their seats.

The purple shockwave collided with the ship. The bridge crew released their grips on their seats and staired at each other in confusion as only a light shake was felt.

Gantu slowly sat up and rubbed his head. "I keep forgetting just how well armored the Zodiac is."

"Well armored, but SLOW!" Hamsterviel complained. "Why is it that a meager shuttle can outrun the flagship of the galactic alliance?"

One of the crew turned toward Hamsterveil. "Well, this ship is fifteen kilometers in length."

Dr. Hamsterviel glared at the crewmember, a small green light flashed on his metal breastplate. Another gray triangle on the crewmember's chest glowed a bright yellow and he dropped from his seat into the fetal position, screaming into his chest..

"That was a rhetorical question!" Hamsterviel shouted out. "And rhetorical questions do not call for answers! Therefore, you shall not answer them! Do you understand me you pathetic excuse for a nameless minion you?"

"Yes sir!" the crewmember screamed out between his cries of pain.

"That's _yes master_! Get it right!"

"Yes master!"

The light on Hamsterviel's breastplate changed from green, to blue, and the triangle on the crewman's chest stopped glowing. The crewman ceased his screaming and continued to lye on the floor with his eyes closed, shivering.

Gantu turned back toward Hamsterviel. "Um... Master? Shouldn't we be pursuing her?"

"No!" Hamsterviel shouted back. "She is now powerless. She cannot threaten us any longer. We will not waste our time on such trivial matters as her. Set course back to planet Turo!"

"Setting course for planet Turo." Another crewmember answered. "Nava-calculations to be completed in one minute, seventeen seconds."

Hamsterviel grumbled under his breath. "Why do I have to wait so long for the Zodiac's stupid computer to complete its calculating?"

Still another crewmember turned around and opened her mouth, but hesitated before speaking.

"Was that a rhetorical question sir, uh, master?"

Hamsterviel sneered at the her. "YES!"

* * *

_Lopos, second moon of Avora VII._

A flash of light in space marked the exit of the former grand councilwoman's shuttle from hyperspace. Upon its entrance into real space, the remaining main engines of the shuttle flared up and ceased functioning.

With smoke now pouring from all broken engines, the shuttle began its descent toward the green surfaced moon with maneuvering thrusters only.

The surface of the moon was flat green rock and green sky with the occasional towering blue stalk jutting up from the ground like many far between flagpoles.

A fireball descended through the atmosphere at a dangerously steep angle. The flames went out when once the shuttle reached the moon's troposphere. The maneuvering thrusters on the shuttle fired in full reverse to try to slow its descent This was just barely enough for the shuttle to survive its impact with the ground as it slid for many kilometers, tearing the plating off the bottom of the hull and knocking over many blue stalks.

When the shuttle stopped, and the dust cleared, a small airlock at the base of the shuttle front spun open, and the former grand councilwoman, wearing dark goggles and an airmask, walked outside and surveyed the landscape.

The former grand councilwoman looked up at the sky to see two suns beating down on her. One small and yellow, one slightly larger and dark red. She looked to the other side of the sky to see a small white moon in the distance, and a very large planet of red and white folds much closer.

"Please be here." She whispered to herself. "Please be here. Otherwise we're all doomed."

The former grand councilwoman reached into the back pocket of her baggy white pants and pulled out a glass plate displaying a map in blue with a red dot in the center, and an blinking orange dot off in the distance.

She put the glass plate back in her pocket and walked back through the small airlock into the shuttle. After a few minutes had passed, a hovering chopper with the former grand councilwoman at the stick shot out of the airlock and off into the horizon.

In a distant place, the scenery looked much the same from where the shuttle had landed, only sticking out from the dirt was a tube with an airlock, similar to the airlock one the former grand councilwoman's shuttle, but much larger.

A speeding trail of dust whipping up on the horizon could be seen getting closer to the tube in the ground. Finally, the dust trail began to slow down and the chopper carrying the former grand councilwoman came into view.

The chopper stopped right in front of the tube, and the former grand councilwoman hopped off and slowly approached its airlock.

She knelt down and knocked on the airlock twice. When she heard a mechanical sound she turned her head to see a thin pole extending from under the dirt with what appeared to be a camera on the end of it.

The camera swiveled around to look at her for a few seconds and then retracted back under the dirt.

The air lock opened, sucking the outside dust inside, allowing the former grand councilwoman to enter.

When the airlock closed around her, the room filled with cloudy gas. The former grand councilwoman took off her mask and goggles and breathed the air in the room.

The opposite end of the airlock opened up and the former grand councilwoman walked down a ramp into a massive circular room lit up only at her end.

What she could see was that about ten meters in front of her was some kind of dome shaped barrier, looking like the swirly rainbow patterns on a soap bubble.

With great echoes throughout the room, a voice called out that the former grand councilwoman would never in many eons have imagined that she would be happy to hear.

"I have been expecting you grand councilwoman." The voice called out.

"There is no more grand council Dr. Jookiba" She replied. "Just call me Zafyrie, because that's all I am now."

The second half of the room then lit up. Dr. Jumba Jookiba looked humbly at the woman named Zafyrie from within the strange bubble.

"Very well Ms. Zafyrie." Jumba replied. "But you may be changing mind as to how I am addressing you once you step into field. Is a very rejuvenating experience no?"

Zafyrie looked at Jumba with her eyes squinted.

Jumba continued. "Oh yes! I am not being the only one here who is wishing to welcome you."

Suddenly, peaking their heads out from behind Jumba were three small creatures each with an amazing resemblnce to a creation of Dr. Jookiba from long ago who called himself Stitch.

One was a light sea green with a white belly and a V shaped green stripe on its chest. It had thin bulb ended antennae extending from its head, as well as two more pairs extending from its back.

The second was slightly larger than Stitch. It was bright red with a firey orange belly and orange rings around its eyes. It had Stitch's four arms and Stitch's antennae and quills on its back, all bright red.

The third was the spitting image of Stitch in his dog disguise, with no extra limbs or appendages, only it was slightly smaller, and a lighter shade of blue.

Zafyrie was stunned at the sight. Her eyes went wide and her jaw hung open.

"Is that?" She said stuttering. "Is that really you?… Emerald?… Ruby?… Sapphire?"

The three creatures jumped out from behind Jumba and pranced up to Zafyrie with the brightest smiles on their faces, but they stopped upon reaching the edge of the strange bubble.

"Zafyrie!" Sapphire shouted. "I haven't seen you in so long!"

"Will you let us sit on your shoulders like you always do?" Ruby pleaded.

"Where's Stitch and Angel? Where's Lilo and Nani?" Emerald asked.

Zafyrie's jaw started quivering and a tear came down her cheek. "I thought..." she began, "I thought you three would've disappeared by now."

"We would've" Sapphire answered. "If it wasn't for Jumba's static temporal shield. We exist only as long as we're inside it."

Sapphire put his hand through the wall of the bubble, but nothing came out the other side. Zafyrie could see the cross section of Sapphire's arm at touching the edge of the bubble. Fur, skin, muscle, and bone. Sapphire pulled his arm back behind the bubble again and it reformed.

"Static temporal shield will not be lasting forever Ms. Zafyrie." Jumba said. "Temporal fissure caused by Dr. Hamsterviel's meddlings has become too great a stress for it to bear. I am believing it will be collapsing into nothing..." Jumba looked down at the three small creatures at the edge of the field, who all turned around and looked back up at him with slightly sad expressions. "I am believing it will be collapsing in two and a half orbital cycles of Lopos around Avora Seven. Then, I will be becoming helpless cripple once more, and Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire, will be all ceasing to exist."

The trio of small creatures looked back up at Zafyire.

"Come on inside Zafyrie." Emerald beckoned, all three of her right tendrils in a come-hither motion. "It's all right, it'll feel good."

Hesitantly, Zafyrie put her hand up to the bubble, and pushed it through. The hand on the other side though, was not dressed in its plain white sleeve, but in the elaborate décor it once had when it belonged to the grand councilwoman of the galactic federation.

Marvelling at this occurrence, Zafyrie stepped through the bubble. Now she found herself dressed in the regal uniform she once adorned in the capitol building of Turo Prime. She lifted her hands up to feel her face. All of her scars were gone, and her left eye was back.

"Incredible" She whispered to herself.

She looked down at the feel of a tugging on her robe to see Ruby looking up at her. She kneeled down to look at the creature.

"Lady Zafyrie?" Ruby asked. "Where's Angel and Stitch? Where's my Ohana?"

Zafyrie closed her eyes. She didn't want to tell them this, but she had to.

"After his hostile takeover. Hamsterviel's first target was Earth. He used the fusion cannons on the Zodiac to melt the polar ice caps, and then to boil the oceans. Stitch, Angel, all your other siblings, and your adoptive human family… are all dead."

The gleeful faces of the three little creatures shattered upon hearing those words.

They could only hold it in a few seconds. They all burst out into tears buried their heads in Zafyrie's legs. Zafyrie could barely manage to wrap her arms all the way around them, and hold them closer to her.

"I'm sorry." She whispered toward the trio buried in her robes.

"There is a way to bring them back though." Zafyrie tried to reassure them. They looked up at her all still on the verge of crying a frenzy.

Zafyrie stood up.

"That is why I have come to see you Jumba" She said.

"I am knowing it is." Jumba responded.

"The theorems behind the machine that Hamsterviel used to create this predicament were pioneered by you."

"Is being correct."

"Therefore, you are the only one who can fix this situation."

"Is also being correct."

"So you have to go back and stop Hamsterviel from killing experiment 624!"

Sapphire's eyes widened at his sudden realization. "So that's how he did it."

Ruby and Emerald began to sob again.

"Angel." Ruby cried to herself.

"No…" Emerald cried to herself.

"Jumba" Zafyrie continued. "If you can prevent Angel's death, then everything will go back to the way it should be. Can you do this?"

"I can." Jumba nodded at Zafyrie. "I already have machine built and tested. But only one thing is remaining that I am needing for to be making machine fully functional. Four kilograms of one hudred percent pure Uburnium."

"One hundred percent pure?" Zafyrie gasped at Jumba. "Even seven percent is illegal."

"Without it, machine will not be working."

"Very well. I'm sure there's a black market somewhere where I can get it."

"You must be being back before two and a half orbital cycles of Lopos around Avora Seven are over, and static temporal shield collapses."

"Then you will go back and fix everything?"

Jumba lowered his head and then sat down on the ground. "Actually… No. I cannot go back for to be in potential combat. I am just fat lazy slob with bad heart and slipped disc."

Jumba looked up, and suddenly grinned.

"They will be going!" Jumba said, pointing to Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire.


	2. Chapter Two

**To My Readers:** I'm sorry, but it won't be until chapter three when Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire show up in Lilo and Nani's house. But this is still an excellent chapter and I hope to recieve many reviews on it.  
BTW: There is a bit of foreshadowing going on in the last scene of this chapter.

* * *

Six thirty-five. Nani should be home in only a few minutes. Then she would see what he did, and everything would be ruined. Three more months. It would be three more months of boredom if she saw what he had done. 

Stitch could clean up his mess in less than a minute, take it all out to the garbage, and sweep the floor. She would never know. She would sing his praises and think he was the most perfect gentleman ever. But how could he live with himself if he did? He failed. He was a failure. He didn't deserve to be praised for anything until he spent the next three months being as perfect as perfect can be.

Stitch didn't move, except to flick back an earas he heard the trademark rumbling of Nani's jeep pulling into the driveway. The sound was so exact it couldn't be anything else. The squeal of the brake pads only the slightest bit misaligned. The pistons running a bit smoother than most since Nani insisted on dumping a bottle of engine detergent into the gas tank every month. The whooshing sound like running water made because the jeep used last models' oil filter. No human could ever possibly pick up any of these things, but to Stitch, they were as clear as a label. Nani was home, right on time.

Stitch's ear flicked back to its former position as the engine halted, but then flicked toward the door again at the soft sound of footsteps walking up the stairs to the deck. Other than his ear, Stitch didn't move, he just stared down at what he did, waiting for the inevitable scoldings, lectures, and the next day apology that was sure to come, but still without being allowed to do anything fun.

Stitch heard the lock on the front door turn and click in place. The keys rattled as they were drawn back, and the doorknob creak slightly, and then the door was opened.

"Stitch I'm home!" Nani shouted out as soon as she opened the door.

"It's been three months and you haven't broken a thing. You know what that means?"

Nani stood in the doorway, her fingers tightened and trying to hold back from giggling in anticipation of Stitch running up to her and leaping into her arms, yelling out some gleeful string of words she couldn't understand.

"Any second now…" nani whispered to herself.

Nothing happened.

Nani took a step forward and shut the front door behind her. After shoving her keys in her back pocket, she took another step forward.

"Stitch!" She waited a few seconds after calling his name and then began to walk into the kitchen.

"Must be off somewhere." She said to himself. This was just before she saw him. Stitch on the kitchen floor, with his back turned toward her. He was slumped over and his ears hung down as far as he could push them.

"Stitch? What's the matter?" Nani asked, but he wouldn't move.

Nani walked around to the other side of the kitchen to see Stitches face. His mouth was pressed tightly shut, his eyes were narrowed and watery. Nani looked down for a moment in wonder of what was bothering Stitch, though it seemed looking down had provided the answer.

At Stitches feet were many thin scattered about pieces of porcelain. Some were like slivers, others could only fit in palm of your hand, but they all once were part of a plain white mug from the cupboard just to the side of the sink.

"Stitch?" Nani asked. "How did this happen?"

"It was… accident." Stitch replied. "I only wanted juice. But, I knocked over cup. I didn't see it 'till was too late."

Nani continued to look at the shattered mug for a few more seconds, and then back at Stitch, and then back at the mug. Nani finally raised her head toward the counter, and sure enough there was an open cardboard carton of some generic orange/pineapple blend sitting there. Nani turned to Stitch once again.

"Were you angry when you broke that cup?" She asked him in a stern voice.

"Naga."

"Were you frustrated when you broke that cup?"

"Naga."

"Were you sad when you broke that cup?"

"Naga. Was accident. I bumbed it with elbow. Didn't see it 'till too late."

Nani breathed in and let out a heavy sigh. She kneeled down and put her hand on Stitch's back.

"Stitch, look at me."

Stitch obeyed her command.

"Stitch. People knock cups off of counters on accident all the time. When I asked you if you could keep from breaking anything for three months, I meant on purpose."

Stitch relaxed the tension in his face. His eyes widened to their normal selves and his ears lifted up slightly.

"That means…" Stitch swallowed hard and couldn't finish his comment, so Nani finished it for him.

"That means you're going to the Luau this Saturday."

That was when the Stitch Nani expected to see when she walked into the door greeted her. Stitch leapt up at Nani with his arms open and almost knocked her over as she caught him in mid air. Stitch pressed himself as hard as he could into Nani as he shouted out some gleeful string of words she couldn't understand.

"But first." Nani interrupted. Stitch looked up at her horrified. "Clean up your mess."

* * *

Some odd days later, however many days it took to fill in the gap between now and when Nani first told Stitch he could come to Saturday's Luau. Everyone from town who could make it, as well as a few fellow experiments, was there at the beach on that cloudless, windless night. 

David performed his flame dance on a makeshift stage built only yesterday from plywood and bamboo poles. The apparently multitalented hulking hula teacher Moses sat cross-legged just off stage pounding away on a set of drums. French Fry stood up on a stool surrounded by three tables in a square around him, each with eight half-full chafing dishes, and a sign around his neck saying _'No Forths!'_ Slugger seemed the biggest distraction from David's flame dance as he stood on a blanket and juggled six poles with flaming ends with his tail. The three little girls, Elena, Yuki, and Theresa sat in front of the blanket mesmerized by Slugger's talents. Their gang leader Myrtle sat a ways away with her back turned to Slugger, trying desperately to make herself look uninterested, though she couldn't help but glance back at him occasionally.

Lilo and Victoria, both in t-shirts and khaki shorts, were past the edge of the beach in the trees with a fish tank net, crawling on the ground in search of only the very biggest of insects, or at least that's what Victoria was told.

"You promised me there would be beetles here three inches long!" Victoria seemed to both shout and whisper at the same time.

"I lied!" Lilo answered in the same way.

"Why?"

"That's why!"

Victoria looked forward in the direction of Lilo's pointing finger to see a large rock partially covering a hole in the ground, and an offshoot of a stream just barely trickling inside.

"Watch this." Lilo said in that tone you get when you're about to show someone the coolest thing in the world.

Lilo stuck her hand to her mouth and made kissing noises into the air. As soon as she was done, what should come crawling out of the hole in the ground but a huge sea green frog.

The frog took one hop toward Lilo and began croaking wildly at her.

"What's that thing?" Victoria asked, scoothing away only slightly.

"His name is Ghetto." Lilo answered. "He's a frog."

"I know he's a frog but why did you wanna' show him to me?"

"Because of this."

Lilo reached into her back pocket and pulled out a tiny zip-top bag with a shredded piece of raw fish in it. Standing up on her knees, she opened the bag with one hand, and dumped the contents into the other. She then reached that hand down to the ground, and Victoria's jaw dropped at the sight of Ghetto the frog hopping forward and eating out of Lilo's hand.

After Ghetto was finished he turned around and crawled back into his hole beneath the rock. Lilo then turned back toward Victoria.

"I have to feed him fresh Sashimi every Saturday." She told her friend with her eyes closed.

It took Victoria a few seconds to register what had happened. She then shook her head and turned toward Lilo.

"Why?" She asked.

"Because Ghetto keeps the gravity from causing Earth to cave in on itself!"

Victoria turned back toward Ghetto's den and stared in wonder for some time before she could bring herself to speak again.

"Cool… A magic frog." Was all she could get out.

Back at the Luau, Stitch sat on the ground in front of the makeshift stage watching David's flame dance. In his lap was a plate with grilled Mahi-Mahi with some sort of hot red sauce and a fruit salad. A knife and fork was stuck behind his ear.

Little to Stitch's knowledge, two figures from off in the shadows were staring at him intently.

"He doesn't seem at all bothered by the crowd and the noise. Hes not even trying to be the center of attention." A soft voice spoke up, clearly belonging to Nani.

Another voice, instantly recognizable as ex-CIA agent Cobra Bubbles, answered her comment. "Looking at him now, its hard to believe that's the same Stitch I first saw at your house."

"It'd better be hard to believe after almost three years of working with him! Look at him. He's eating with a knife and fork. He hasn't broken anything on purpose in three months. We even got him to shower and brush his teeth every day!"

"Impressive, to say the least. If he keeps this up throughout the rest of the Luau, you might just be rid of a very uncomfortable microscope peering down on you."

"What the! What's he doing?"

Cobra turned back to see Stitch was no longer watching David, and his empty plate with knife and fork. Looking around a little while longer, he found Stitch hiding behind a reclining pool chair upon which a slightly pudgy woman was laying.

Stitch inched his way around the chair and carefully pried open the woman's finger to snatch away what looked to be a canvas walled, though it was filled with many self-grooming bits like nail files, clippers, tweezers, and a tiny hand mirror.

Stitch jumped back from the woman with grooming wallet in hand as she snorted and turned her head. Seeing as she was still asleep, he slumped forward with a sigh, and then darted off toward two little plaid backpacks leaning against a palm tree at the edge of the beach, one greenish, and the other reddish. Stitch threw the wallet inside the green one, and then swung both bags over his back and took off into the night.

Cobra turned his head back toward a very embarrassed Nani.

"It seems I'll have to continue to check up on his progress after all."

* * *

All one could hear was the wind howling and plastic grocery bags fluttering about in the back ally between the grocery store and the post office of downtown Kokaua. 

A small dark figure emerged from the shadows. Dressed in a cheap, ugly yellow vinyl threnchcoat was experiment 625.

Another, equally small figure walked into the alley. With two small backpacks over his shoulder, Stitch walked to 625, and then looked the other way.

"So," 625 asked. "Ya' got the goods?"

"Ih" Stitch replied, barely nodding his head.

"Then what are ya' waiting for. Fork 'em over."

Stitch turned his head toward 625, and then dropped his red bag.

625 quickly swiped it, opened it up, and shoved his head inside. After a long wiff of the packs contents, 625 brought his head back out of the pack grinning from ear to ear. He then reached into the pack and started to pull things out and examine them.

"Slow smoked and aged pancetta straight from Italy. Genuine San Francisco Sourdough. And…" 625 pulled out a small brown paper bag from the pack, opened it, and smelled what was inside. "Dare I say it?" He smelled the bag again. "Yes! One extra large black truffle! All the missing ingredients I need to make the sandwich of the gods! Bwa, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Miki capsule!"

"Huh? Oh right!"

625 reached into the inside of his trenchcoat and pulled out a metal cylinder with what looked to be a screw on lid. Stitch quickly grabbed the cylinder from 625 and held it close against his side.

625 looked back at Stitch, and then squinted at him in suspicion. "By the way… how did you get the money for all this stuff?"

"Pleakly's credit cards." Stitch immediately answered back.

"Well, that explains it."

Just as 625 put everything back into the red pack and swung it over his shoulder, Stitch shoved the green pack into his face. 625 just barely managed to grab the green pack without falling over.

"Now you deliver package." Stitch snorted at 625.

"Geese man, don't have a…" 625 looked out only to find Stitch was gone.

* * *

The lights were all dim on the bridge deck of the wrecked chunk of black metal now being occupied by Gantu and experiment 625. 625 was alone on the third deck with his freshly made _'sandwich of the gods'_ sitting on a plate on the computer panel right in front of him. 

625 would punch in a few buttons, take a small bite of his sandwich, then twirl his chair around to look at the transporter tube in the center of the room. Inside it was the small green backpack Stitch had rather forcibly given him about an hour earlier. Then he would spin back around to the the computer panel. Sometimes though, 625's normal rhythm would be interrupted as he turned his chair only half way around to face the elevator, and leaned forward to get a better listen on the abusive conversation taking place on the living deck just below.

"Why Gantu? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why is she not bowing before me as if I was her one and only deity? Why is her soul not breaking?"

"I'm sorry sir, but for the thousandth time, I don't have the answer to that question."

"Why do you not know you? Are you too stupid to be deducing theories? Or are you just too lazy to try?"

"Please Dr.! Try to understand that I can't possibly have the answers. I don't have her any more, and I only knew her for three days."

"Hrmmph!… She is the key to everything. Without her, nothing will work. All my plans will grind to a standstill."

"Yes I understand sir."

"You will speak only when it's called for!… I am so desperate for answers I'll even ask you now.

"Why, why, why? How could anyone or anything have that much strength of will?"

Back up on the bridge deck, 625 spun his chair around three times, stopping in front of this computer panel. He grabbed what little remained of his sandwich in one hand and threw the entire thing into his mouth. With his other hand he pressed just a few more buttons, and finished swallowing just in time to turn around and hear.

"Transporter activated. Transporting in ten seconds."

"Yeah, that's a good question Hammy." 625 whispered to himself. "And you'll never believe the answer.'

625 just finished talking when the backpack was engulfed in a whirling light, and then was gone.

* * *

In a massive room with freezing iron floors was a cell. It was a glass box with no bottom resting on the floor, held down in the center by a metal column pushing on it from the ceiling. The glass box was large, like a bedroom. How big the room that held it was one couldn't tell, as there was just barely enough light in the box to see, and it didn't extend much passed the glass walls. 

Inside the box were only the most essential tools for survival: a dirty cot, a strangely small steel toilet, and a circular pad on the floor giving off what little light was present in the room.

It was cold in the box. So cold you could see your own breath. The dampness would soak into your hair and make you miserable. And with no obvious methods of washing, or of circulation, you could only imagine how much the smell would choke you.

Suddenly piercing through the darkness was tiny tornado of pure yellow light. For a moment, the room was as bright as a cloudless noon, and then it was gone.

In the place of the light, now standing on the small circular pad inside the box was the same small green backpack that Stich had given 625.

Something walked toward the bag, it was too dark to see what, but it looked too thin to be enjoying itself, and it limped on its right foot.

The light from the pad was just bright enough that when the figure got close enough, one could see it extending two little pink paws out toward the backpack. The paws revealed just how badly this creature was being treated. Its fingernails had grown so long that they were starting to curl into their respective fingers. Its cuticles had bled so much that they stained the tips of their fingers a deeper shade of pink. The knuckles of these paws had no fur at all, and the bare white skin was covered in tiny brown scabs. It was only from the lower back of the paws that you could tell it had pink fur at all, as the rest of the back hand was either bare or bloodstained, and the palms of these paws were soiled black.

Despite however much pain these little pink paws must be experiencing, they nonetheless managed to carefully open the green back pack, and slowly remove the objects hidden inside.

The first thing Angel pulled from the backpack was the little canvas wallet. She opened it up to find what to her must've been a godsend. There were clippers, nail files, tweezers, and that essential tiny hand mirror. But she would save that for later, at the moment there were more important things.

The next item was a small melting Hershey bar, still in its wrapper. _Food!_ That was what Angel was looking for. Her paws shivered in pain as she extended her fingers from their previous clenched positions. Her cuticles began to bleed again as she tried to manipulate her fingers around the brown and silver wrappings of the chocolate bar. Once the Hershey bar was unwrapped, she stuffed the whole thing into her mouth, staining he sides of her lips brown. In spite of her raging hunger, Angel savored the Hershey bar in her mouth for as long as possible until she could no longer stand the pain, and swallowed the now liquid chocolate.

The next item, a large zip-top bag stuffed as full as possible with individually wrapped moist towlettes that Stitch had swiped from some fast food restaurant. Even through the zip-top and the paper wrappings, Angel could smell the alcohol and soap soaking the towlettes inside. Still, those would have to wait for later.

The next thing angel pulled out was a piece of Tupperware. Inside she could smell the heavenly aroma of grilled Mahi-Mahi smothered in a hot red sauce. Her curled claws couldn't grip on the lid of the Tupperware, so she had to hold it in both hand and pry the lid open with her teeth. But once she did, the smell made her forget, if only for a second, all the suffering she had ever gone through at the hands of Dr. Hamsterviel. When she finally snapped back to reality, she lifted up the Tupperware, and dumped the entire contents into her mouth. Tears poured freely down her cheeks as she chewed on the Mahi-Mahi until there was no flavor left, only a mushy mass of something, and then swallowed.

Angel reached down into the pack again and pulled out what she hoped for the most. It was a twelve ounce cardboard carton of Tropicana orange juice. Angel knew there was no way to open it with her paws in the condition they were in, so she put the entire carton in her mouth and bit down. Her throat, burning of drought, felt a hundred percent better as orange juice flowed into it from he holes she bit into the carton. She then swallowed the carton just to get the last tiny taste that was left inside.

Angel reached down into the pack once again, and found there was only one thing left. It was a piece of paper with a lock of blue hair stapled onto the bottom. Angel had come to recognize instantly the smell of that blue hair.

She held the paper up to her nose and closed her eyes. Her entire body relaxed and shuddered as she inhaled the sweet smell of that blue hair for what seemed to be hours. She then finally opened her eyes again, and held the paper over the light of the circular pad so that she could read it. It was all in Turan, but if it were translated, it might go something like this.

_My Bujibu._

_I don't know how much longer I can stand this. Constantly sending you these care packages but never being able to see you myself. You don't know how much I wish_ _I was allowed to come to you personally. I know I've told you this a hundred times before but I don't know what else to write. I will get you out of there, even though I can't come after you myself-lest we will never be allowed to see each other again- I'll think of a way. And if I can't… well, neither of us should think about what would happen if I can't._

_Your Bujibu_

_Stitch_


	3. Chapter Three

It was almost eleven when Nani got home. Due to an unfortunate incident involving an oxygen tank, the emergency sprinkler system, and a disgruntled tourist, Mr. Jameson said he would pay double time for anyone who would stay after hours and help clean up the rental pavilion. Nani stayed the longest out of any of them, and to anyone who's spent more than a few days with her, for obvious reasons.

Nani pulled up the dirt hill toward her stilted house, between the columns that held up the living room that made a roof under which to park her jeep. Turning off the engine, and stepping out of the jeep, she heard what seemed like a faint whispering.

Normally Nani would be fast asleep by now, so she wouldn't have known anything was going on. But tonight was different, as Nani's five hours of double time could attest to.

Whatever it was, Nani was too tired and too sore to be interested in it. Nani ignored the sounds and began to walk up to the stairway to deck of the house. This was when, no longer having a wall to her left, and dense jungle in front of her, she was able to make out where the whispering was coming from. Nani turned her head to look at the stone stairway that led from the side of her house to a smooth stone platform where a canvas hammock was tied between two palm trees. That was the place anyone in the family went when either they wanted an extraordinary view of the ocean, or when something was deeply troubling them. What's more, now much closer to the source of the noise, Nani could make it out not as whispering, but as whimpering.

Nani stood in thought about whether or not she should go up there and see what it was, or whether she was too tired to care.

In the end, curiosity got the best of Nani, and she started toward the stone steps.

As she reached the base of the steps, Nani could hear much more clearly the sound coming from the platform above. It wasn't whimpering, it was crying.

As Nani climbed the steps, slowly to avoid making any noise, she could make out the crying a bit more clearly with each step.

The crying was made up of a series of long moans, followed by a period of stuttered breathing, and finally one long, ugly snort before starting over at the beginning.

Nani finally reached a step high enough that she could pear over the top of the stone stairway to see who it was crying on that platform.

It was Stitch.

He was sitting on the hammock with his back turned to the stairway, and thusly, to Nani. All four arms were extended, as well as his antennae and the quills on his back. Stitch was hunched over, looking at something, touching something, and crying uncontrollably while he was at it.

Getting down on her hands and knees, and inching just a little closer, Nani could here even more clearly the sounds Stitch was making.

His long period of moaning was in fact not moaning at all, but humming. Stitch was humming something to himself, or at least trying to. It wasn't very good considering he was trying to hum through a constant stuttering breath.

From what little Nani was able to make out through all of Stitch's skips and pauses, was that it sounded almost like it would've been a lullaby of some sort. Although Nani had never heard it before, that's what she was guessing.

Nani scooched just a little closer.

She could now see what it was Stitch was crying over.

Stitch sat cross legged on his hammock. In his lap was a hollow metal cylinder. What must've been its lid was on the ground next to the hammock. In his hands he held only a few objects.

In his two right hands were two small glass vials with black rubber tops. One was filled with a clear liquid, like water, the other was filled with a far thicker liquid that was a dull pink, almost purple, but not quite.

Stitch stopped crying just long enough to snap the top off the vile with the clear liquid and chug it. After bringing his head back down he continued crying with his mouth and eyes closed as he tried to keep the liquid in his mouth for as long as possible, until a hiccup forced him to swallow it.

Stitch opened his eyes and tossed the vile that once contained the clear liquid behind him to the ground. It shattered with only a light noise.

Stitch brought the other vile, the one filled with the pink liquid up to his face. He thought about drinking it right then and there, but no, that one was special, he would have to save it for later, so he put it back inside the metal cylinder.

Stitch turned his head to the side and opened his top left hand. In that hand was a few curly black shavings. The smell of hardened keratin was unmistakable to Stitch, though Nani had no idea what it was.

Stitch continued to cry as he took the index finger of his top right hand and rolled the shavings around in his top left palm. After several minutes, Stitch ate them as well.

Finally, looking down to his bottom left hand, Stitch found a small matt of soiled pink fur. Stitch cradled the matt of fur in all four hands as if it were the most precious thing in the world. He held it up to his nose and smelled it.

Stitch immediately dropped the fur onto the hammock and buried his face in his hands, wailing loudly.

He could smell exactly what Angel was going through. The fur was soaked in dirt, blood and urine. And then there were the more subtle smells that no human could pick up. The fur was saturated with the smells of adrenalin and oxidized ammonia from experiencing almost constant fear and/or pain. The nauseating stench of cortisol told Stitch she was in a state of almost unbearable anxiety. But beneath it all was the unmistakable scent of serotonin. It was just strong enough for Stitch to pick up, but the fact that there was enough to register in his nose just from her fur told him that she hadn't given up hope, that she still had some fight left in her, however small it was, she still had some left.

Nani tried to inch her way a little closer, but her foot stepped on a pebble and sent it careening down the stone stairs.

The tiny rattling was more than enough to get Stitch's attention.

Stitch stopped crying in a heartbeat, lifted his head, and after a brief pause, turned toward Nani with a furious glare.

Nani froze in fear. She though at any second Stitch would lash out at her, try to claw her eyes out, or something along those lines. But Stitch didn't. He only took a deep breath and said.

"Go away Nani."

It took Nani a few seconds to register that Stitch wasn't going to attack her. After she had come to her senses she tried to reason with him.

"Stitch? What's wrong? I can help you." Nani asked Stitch.

"Naga help Stitch. Nobody can help Stitch."

"How do you know?"

"Stitch knows. Now go away Nani."

Nani didn't want to unleash whatever she thought Stitch might have been capable of at the moment, so she nodded her head, stood up, and began walking down the stairs. But just before the stone platform disappeared from view, she turned back around to look at Stitch stuffing the matt of fur into the metal cylinder and hopping off the hammock to replace its screw on lid.

Nani reached the door to her house, unlocked and opened it. When Nani closed the door behind her and flicked on the light, she was surprised to see Lilo right in front of her in plain aquamarine pajamas, and her arm folded across her chest.

"You weren't supposed to do that." Lilo told Nani in as stern a voice as she could muster.

"Does he do that every night?" Nani asked.

Lilo nodded her head. "During the day he's just the most happy-go-lucky thing. You'd think he doesn't have a care in the world. But every night, he goes out there with than can, and cries. He cries for hours, and then comes back into the dome through the window and goes to sleep like nothing was ever wrong."

"Do you know why he does that?"

Lilo once again nodded her head. "Yeah I know. But there's nothing I can do about it. Believe me I've tried. And there's nothing anyone else can do about it either."

"Why not?"

"Don't ask me that! Never ask me that! Just forget this happened! That's what's best."

Nani's eyes trailed Lilo as she turned around and took a left at the hallway. She could hear the sound of the elevator lifting Lilo up to her dome.

Too exhausted to do anything else, Nani walked forward and too a right at the hallway. She walked into her room and fell onto her bed. Without even changing clothes, Nani's head hit the pillow, and she was asleep.

* * *

Stitch had finally come inside from his nightly bout of despair, and was snoring soundly on his bed in his and Lilo's dome. Pleakly and Jumba were both asleep in their respective bunks. Nani was out like a rock on her bed, so no one noticed what was taking place just outside. 

On the great circle of dirt just outside the parking space below the house, white fog began to pour out from the ground until the entire driveway was blanketed. In the center, the fog shot up almost ten feet into the air before falling back down to the ground. Flickering lights could barely be seen through the pillar of fog.

From the pillar of fog, three small figures emerged looking a lot like Stitch. They were Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire. As soon as they were outside the flickering lights, the ground stopped spewing out fog and everything settled. The trio walked over to the staircase leading to the deck and stood there, staring up at house above.

"Sure is allot smaller than I remember it." Emerald Said

"And allot less metallic." Ruby Added.

Sapphire was the last to add his comment. "Well it stands to reason doesn't it? This was still back when they were struggling to make ends meet."

"Oh!" Ruby sighed out, just narrowly avoiding a scream. "I can't wait to see Stitch and Lilo again!"

"Be careful around them Ruby." Sapphire told her. "This isn't the same Stitch you know. He's impulsive, and sometimes violent. And neither of them know who any of us are either, so remember that. Same goes to you Emerald."

"You don't have to tell me twice." Emerald said back at Ruby. "I listened to Jumba's lecture same as you."

"So did I!" Ruby retorted at the other two.

"Yeah!" Emerald snapped back at her. "And you fell asleep halfway through it."

"Well it was boring!"

Emerald and Sapphire both slapped their foreheads at Ruby's comment.

"Let's just get started." Emerald signed as she shook her head.

"Stop Hamsterwheel from killing Angel." Ruby said.

"Which saves us from blinking out of existence." Emerald continued.

"Thus preventing the overthrow of the Galactic Federation." Sapphire finished.


	4. Chapter Four

**To My Readers and Reviewers:** This is the chapter where you'll finally get a glimpse at the personalities of Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire.  
At this point I'm kind of stuck at to what should happen next. Suggestions would be appreciated. But if you are going to suggest something, please not that I already have the climax and ending detailed, as well as where the three sibling experiments came from and their relations to the other characters.  
BTW, if it's not too inconvenient, I'd like you to tell me which of the three sibling experiments are your favorite so far.

* * *

Dawn had just broken two hours earlier. Nani woke up and looked out her bedroom window to see a slight fog hanging in the air. She walked over to the window and continued to look out for quite some time. This was strange. Nani looked down at the ground below the window, it was still a pasty light tan; it was still dry. Why there would be fog in late spring on Kauai, only a mile from shore, and after three days of no rain escaped all logic in Nani's mind. Either way, it was Sunday and Nani didn't have to work, so it really didn't matter much. 

After a quick change into new slacks and her morning robe, Nani headed out toward the kitchen and was greeted by a delightful smell.

The table had been set. Five plates had been set down on the table, along with five saucers, five tall glasses, five sort glasses, five plain white mugs resting upside down on paper towels, and five neatly folded and rolled napkins each with a spoon, knife and fork.

On each of the plates was a full stack of pancakes, already slathered with butter, and steaming syrup in a custard dish off to the side. There was hot bacon and eggs over easy. On the saucer was pan-fried toast with jelly. The small glasses were filled with milk while the large ones were filled with the orange pineapple blend. And in the center of the table, was one freshly brewed pot of coffee.

Pleakly stood at the opposite end of the table looking down in wonder at the setting.

"Pleakly, did you do this?" Nani asked.

Pleakly looked up and shook his head. "No."

"Than… who did?"

"Whoever left this."

Pleakly held up a plain blue envelope. Nani slowly walked over and took it from his hand. Turning the envelope over, she saw it had already been opened, presumably by Pleakly, and a familiar red logo was printed on the back fold.

"The Birds of Paradise hotel?" Nani whispered to herself.

Nani opened the envelope and took out the letter.

_Breakfast,_

_Compliments of number 629, 630, and 631._

_Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire._

"When I woke up this morning, the laundry was already done!" Pleakly said. "And I found that same kind of letter tucked away in the folded clothes."

"Jumba…" Nani growled under her breath.

Nani slowly closed her eyes and her body tensed up. She squeezed the letter almost to the point of tearing it. Pleakly backed away from her demonstration, even though he was already at the other side of the table.

It was just then that Lilo and Stitch walked in and distracted her just soon enough for Pleakly to avoid an explosion of screaming.

"Hey!" Lilo called out. "Who made breakfast?"

Nani jumped just noticeably, stared at Lilo for a few seconds, and then at the crumpled letter in her hand, before handing it to Lilo.

Lilo glanced at the letter for a few seconds, Stitch looking over her shoulder at it. Lilo and Stitch looked at each other once they were done.

"Jumba make new experiments?" Stitch asked Lilo rhetorically.

"Experiments that make breakfast for you!" Lilo responded.

"And do laundry!" Pleakly added.

"I don't care what they do." Nani growled under her breath. "Jumba promised us he'd stop making those things. Now he's gonna get it."

Nani stormed out of the Kitchen, pushing Lilo aside with her leg as she went. Lilo immediately got back up and ran after her, Stitch following Lilo.

"Wait!" Lilo Pleaded. "They were probably built to be good! They haven't done anything bad so far!"

Nani refused to listen.

Inside Jumba and Pleakly's room, It was still dark. The blinds were closed and the lights were off. Pleakly was careful to leave it this way as Jumba typically slept late, probably because he also typically stayed up late. Today was no exception. Jumba snored loudly on his side, facing the wall, on the bottom bunk.

"Ghaaa!" Jumba swung around so hard he fell off of his bed as he heard a crash almost like a gunshot going off and light flooded the room. Nani had kicked the door in and was glaring at him furiously with crumpled letter in hand.

"What is being meaning of this?" Jumba yelled out, rubbing his head and trying to no avail to sit up on the floor.

"Don't play dumb with me Jumba! You know exactly what the this is about!" Nani screamed back at him.

"No I am not!"

"Than what the hell is this!" Nani tossed her crumpled blue letter down to Jumba, who promptly unfolded and read it

"Is prank is what it is being." Jumba snorted back at Nani, crumpling up the letter and tossing it behind him. "I never created experiments with such numbers."

"Well, for experiments you never created, they're sure good at making breakfast."

"And doing laundry!" Pleakly added over Nani's shoulder, as he had just arrived, along with Lilo and Stitch standing beside her.

Jumba blinked and squinted his eyes for a moment. "If alleged phantom experiments are cooking meals and cleaning soiled textiles, then what is there to be worrying over?"

"You're making more of those things!" Nani yelled at Jumba, pointing at him. "You promised us you'd stop!"

"I had been stopping ever since two years ago!" Jumba yelled back. "I was not making anything! "

Nani growled again and pulled on her hair before turning around and heading toward the front door.

Lilo and Stitch followed her only half way.

"Where are you going?" Lilo asked.

"To get some air." And with that, Nani was out the door, and slammed it shut.

Lilo and Stitch looked at each other.

"I guess that means more breakfast for us." Lilo told Stitch.

"Emba-Chua. Morcheeba!" Stitch replied.

Outside, Nani stood on the deck of her house, her elbow on the railing to hold up her chin with her palm. Nani stared out tiredly over the surroundings. There wasn't much to see, as the fog from that morning still hadn't dissipated very much.

"What am I ever gonna do with him." Nani whispered to herself.

Nani was then startled by the sound of metal falling on metal from the side of her house. A bit hesitantly, she walked down the steps to the driveway, and looked into the parking space beneath the living room of her house.

Playing with her jeep were two… what had to be the experiments that left the letters about the house attributing chores to themselves.

One, quite large, at least compared to the other, and to Stitch, was bright red and orange in color and was sitting in the driver's seat. It was turned the wheel back and forth, making whooshing noises as if pretending to be in a race.

Another, smaller one, sea green with three pairs of tendrils, one extending from its head, and the other two from its back, stood in front of the jeep, its top pair of tendrils wrapped each around a sponge soaping up the hood of the jeep.

"Who are you? What are you doing with my car?" Nani screamed at them.

Both creatures stopped what they were doing and turned toward Nani. The large red one suddenly burst into a huge toothy smile that didn't make Nani in the least bit comfortable.

"Lilo!" She cried out in her raspy, high pitched feminine voice, and leapt out of the jeep, over the hood and over the green creature, and ran toward Nani with her arms open.

"No! Stop it!" The green one yelled out, in her much smoother and more inviting feminine voice.

The red one didn't seem to notice, as she jumped up and wrapped her four arms around Nani's waste and shoulders, and rubbed her head affectionately against Nani's neck. Nani didn't even have time to react.

"Lilo it's so good to… huh?" The red creature pulled her head back and looked at Nani in confusion. She briefly sniffed Nani's face twice.

"Nani?" She said. "Oh well. Same difference." And continued to rub her head against Nani's neck, apparently oblivious to the look to shock and fear in Nani's face.

"Get off me!" Nani finally managed to scream out.

The red creature brought her head back again and barely began to cry. "But I was just…"

"Do it Ruby." The green one called out to her.

After a long sigh, the red creature let go of Nani and plopped to the ground. Nani watched briefly as she sat down and began tracing circles in the dirt, until her attention was turned away by the approach of the sea green creature.

As it stopped in front of Nani it bowed slightly and then shook her hand with its top pair of tendrils.

"I must apologize for her behavior." The creature told Nani. "Her rashness is matched only by her short attention span."

"Huh?" the red creature said as she looked up at Nani.

"Case in point." The green creature reiterated.

"Who are you?" Nani asked harshly. "How do you know who I am?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" The green creature said, clasping her hands together and bowing once again. "I am number 6-2-9, also called Emerald. That's my sister, 6-3-0," Emerald said while pointing to the red experiment with a tendril. "Her name is Ruby."

Emerald turned around to face the jeep. "And that is my brother, 6-3-1, he's called Sapphire."

Nani looked toward her jeep to see two baby blue feet sticking out from underneath.

"What's he doing to my jeep?" Nani shouted as she ran toward the creature. When she got to her jeep, she grabbed one of the feet, and pulled its owner out from beneath the jeep.

Sapphire was small, smaller than either of the others, and smaller than Stitch. Aside from his size, and the fact that he was a much lighter shade of blue, he looked just like Stitch. He wore dark protective goggles, a torque wrench in one hand, and a set of allen wrenches in the other. His face and hands had been stained black from working on the jeep.

Sapphire lifted his head slightly, and pulled his goggles from his eyes, resting them on his forehead.

"Oh… Hi Nani." He said in his own raspy, childlike voice. "I was just realigning the transmission to obtain better fuel efficiency and reduced noise output."

"Well stop it!" Nani shouted at him.

Sapphire drooped his ears to the sides of his head. "But I've already disassembled the suspension and the exhaust just to get to it."

"I don't care! Just stop!"

Sapphire looked up and out toward Emerald, who nodded her head at him. Sapphire lowered his head toward his chest before placing his tools neatly on the ground, taking off his goggles, and placing those next to them.

Nani turned to face Emerald and Ruby. "All of you come with me!"

Stitch, Lilo, Jumba and Pleakly all sat at the table enjoying their breakfast when they were all startled by yet another crash almost like a gunshot.

All four of them quit eating and ran into the living room to see what just happened. Nani had kicked the door open. Huddled around her legs, were the three creatures she had just met out in her driveway.

"Who… or what, are they being?" Jumba asked.

"These are the experiments you never made." Nani growled back.

"I am having no memory of building experiments with those physical characteristics."

"That's because you didn't buphhmmphmmphphpmm.." It took Ruby a second to realize her mouth was being covered by Emerald's tendrils. Ruby turned her head to face Emerald, who unwrapped her mouth once she stopped mumbling.

Ruby then turned back toward the household in the living room, and her face lit up with joy once again at the sight of someone very special to her.

"Stitch!" She cried out.

"No Ruby!" Was all Emerald could get out as Ruby ran toward Stitch and tackled him to the ground.

"Hey!" Lilo screamed at Ruby. "Get off him!" Lilo tried to pull Ruby off of Stitch by one of the quills on her back, but it was no use, as her strength seemed incredible.

Stitch extended his hidden arms and was about to claw at Ruby's face when she was pulled off by six sea green ropes wrapped around her. Emerald had extended her tendrils all the way across the room and wrapped them around Ruby four times. She must've extended them at least nine times her own body length.

After Emerald let go of Ruby, she retracted her tendrils back to their original length. Lilo could do nothing but stare in awe at her strange ability.

Ruby walked up to Stitch again, slowly this time, and with her ears hung low.

"I'm sorry Stitch." She spoke softly. "Its just, I haven't seen you in so long.

Stitch growled back at Ruby and reared up into a pouncing position.

"Meega-o-itume! Naga naga!" Stitch yelled back at her.

Ruby once again just barely began to cry at the comment.

"But I though you-."

"He doesn't know you, remember?" Emerald interrupted Ruby's comment.

"Right." Ruby whispered, lowering her head. "I'm sorry."

"Hmpp!" Was all Stitch would say back to Ruby, and he turned his head away from her.

"Why are you all here?" Lilo asked all three of them at once.

Emerald walked up to Lilo and bowed slightly, taking her hand in her tendrils and shaking it. Lilo seemed quite surprised at the green experiment's actions, after all, no experiment ever showed her those kind of manners before.

"Hello Lilo. My name is Emerald, I am number 6-2-9. My larger sister is Ruby, she is number 6-3-0, and my smaller brother is number 6-3-1, his name is Sapphire."

"Number?" Jumba interrupted.

"Yes Jumba, number." Emerald answered without turning her head.

"We made you breakfast and did your laundry-"

"And I was about to realign the transmission on Nani's jeep." Sapphire added in.

"In order to give you and your ohana a better first impression of us."

"But why are you here?" Lilo asked again.

"We need to involve ourselves in something important that will happen soon. We can't tell you what it is, and we don't know when exactly it's going to happen, but we thought you might let us stay here with you until it does."

"Aboslutely not!" Nani yelled out.

"Naga!" Stitch yelled out as well.

Nani walked over to the side of the couch, grabbed the phone off the lamp table and began dialing.

"Nani?" Ruby asked. "Who are you calling?"

"Someone who'll know what to do with the three of you." Nani snapped back at her.

As she completed the number, she waited three rings for someone to pick up.

"Hello? This is Nani Pelekai, guardian of Lilo Pelekai, I believe you have me in your records."

Pause…

"I'd like to speak with Cobra Bubbles please."


	5. Chapter Five

** Review Responses**

To Baal 626: Emerald! I'm surprised. I always thought Ruby had the most personality of the three, though you're not me so I can't speak for you.

To Anonymous But Interested: I think you read _The Return of Hamsterviel_ one too many times and it got to your head. Regardless, when I said I wanted suggestions, I meant as to what would happen next, not what the rest of the story was going to be.

To Ri2: Well, they kind of have to have contact with the people they once knew. The reason why will be explained in a later chapter.

To All My Readers And Reviewers: This chapter is going to be just a tad different from any of the others. This chapter I've devoted solely to developing the characters and how they interact with each other. To that effect, there won't be anything too major happening, and I'm trying to make this chapter seem as much like your watching an episode of the show as is reasonably possible.

* * *

Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire watched intently as Nani spoke on the phone to Cobra Bubbles, pacing back and forth with her hand on her forehead as she did. Stitch sat back on the couch leering at the three freeloaders. Even though they weren't really, they had already demonstrated that by making breakfast and doing the laundry, that's what they felt like to Stitch. These things had waltzed into his house looking like experiments of Jumba's, acted like they were all good friends, and were now hogging all the attention that he used to get. 

All of this Stitch could get used to in a few weeks or so. What really bothered him about them was that with them around, he would loose his time he had all to himself. With them around, he would lose his silent nights on the lookout to lament over his scraps in an aluminum canister in perfect privacy. If they spent more than a month here than they would sneak up on him during his time alone with his bits of fur and fingernails, and test tubes, and smother him with affection when he least suspected it. He knew they would do that to him eventually. And when they did, his perfect nights of solitary grief would be ruined. The red one would surely go through the canister like it was a candy box. The green one was too polite for her own good; she would offer her consolation once it was figured out what was happening. Stitch didn't need to be consoled, he needed to be left alone. And the little blue one, he was the quiet one, Stitch couldn't tell what how he would react, and that was why Stitch trusted him least of all.

But there was something else about them as well. They were frightening to him. It was their smell. It was strange to Stitch that even though he'd clearly never met these beings before, their smell was strangely familiar to him. He could almost recognized the odors that wafted out of their fur as something he'd smelled before, many, many times, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Were they aware of this? Either way, their familiar scent made Stitch want to trust them, but then his common sense kicked in and told him that they were strangers, and these conflicting things in his head frightened Stitch even more.

The longer Nani talked to Cobra on the phone about them. The more comfortable it made Stitch feel.

"Well that's what I think anyway." Nani spoke into the phone. "Jumba says he doesn't remember making them. Even after he saw them he insisted that he didn't recognize them."

Stitch was distracted momentarily from Nani's phone conversation by the feeling of the couch cushion moving. Why should it be moving? He didn't move. Stitch turned his head to see the runt Sapphire sitting next to him, his ears hanging slightly and gazing at him with eyes that seemed to cry out to him for love. Sapphire was way too close for comfort. Stitch sneered at Sapphire and pointed to the opposite end of the couch. With his head down, Sapphire scooted to the other end.

Stitch turned back to pay attention once again to Nani's conversation with Cobra, but was sidetracked when he saw Ruby with her arms wrapped around Lilo, his Lilo, from behind. Lilo was sitting down and looking at Nani, only one hand on Ruby's arm to give any indication that she was even aware of Ruby's affections.

Stitch narrowed his eyes and growled, digging his claws in the couch cushion.

"I really appreciate you coming by on such short notice…" Nani began to finish up her phone conversation. "Yes I understand that but I still appreciate it… You too… goodbye."

Nani hung up the phone and turned back toward the living room. Only two of the three were in plain sight. Emerald stood next to her, looking up at her with one hand on her leg. Ruby was looking at her from a ways away, still hugging Lilo. Nani turned her head to one side, and then the other, before finding Sapphire sitting on the couch, opposite Stitch, watching his feet dangle off the edge.

"A man will be here tomorrow to talk about what's gonna' happen to you." Nani said. "Until then, I want you to stay on Jumba's ship."

"Theeey will be doing nothing of sorts." Jumba called out angrily, just having walked into the living room from a short break in the kitchen.

"We'll they're not staying in this house." Nani answered him.

"I am not having first clue as to what they are being capable of, or if they are even being friendly."

"They seem friendly enough to me." Lilo interrupted, looking up at Ruby. Ruby looked back down at Lilo's soft, inviting smile, and couldn't resist her sudden urges. Ruby began to viciously tickle Lilo between the armpits. Lilo fell onto the floor squirming and giggling under her breath, trying to crawl away, but she couldn't on account that Ruby was so much stronger than she was.

It all ended after just a few seconds, and Lilo got back up and threw herself at Ruby, landing in a furry, four-armed hug.

Stitch growled under his breath again and dug his claws even deeper into the couch.

"Could be trick." Jumba continued. "Some of my experiments were very tricky like that."

Emerald walked over to Jumba and looked up at him. Jumba looked back down at her.

"Even though I know it won't make any difference in your mind," Emerald said to Jumba. "I feel the need to tell you that we only want what's best for you."

"They're staying in your ship Jumba, and that's final." Nani shouted out, folding her arms.

All eyes followed Nani as she walked toward the front door, opened it, and then paused just before she would take a step outside.

"If you'll excuse me," Nani said. "I'll going outside to fix the damage that little runt on the couch did to my jeep."

"I wasn't damaging your jeep." Sapphire suddenly called out, causing Nani to turn toward him. "I was improving it."

"Well I don't want you to improve it." Nani told him back.

"But… I simply assumed that you would appreciate a heightened engine efficiency."

"I would, but I don't trust you… yet. Now all of you, leave."

Grudgingly, and with solemn faces, Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire stood up, hopped off, or otherwise got out from heir current positions and walked out the door. Nani followed, and slammed it shut.

Lilo lowered her head.

This was it! They were gone! This was his chance. Stitch hopped off the couch, fighting every nerve in his body not to rush, but to approach Lilo as slowly as possible. Stitch sat down next to Lilo and put his arm around her shoulder. Lilo leaned her head against his. It was such a relief to have Lilo all to himself again.

"I guess, it is just you and me now." Stitch spoke softly.

Lilo turned toward Jumba.

"Are you sure you don't remember making anything beyond 6-2-8?" She asked.

"Am absolutely positive!" Jumba shouted back. "I am having doubts that they are even being experiments at all."

"How come?"

"Because of way they were referring to themselves. Was being highly irregular of experiments."

"Referring?"

"What they were calling themselves."

"Oh… What did they call themselves?"

Jumba paused for a brief second and turned his head away before answering.

"They were referring to themselves as number."

Lilo looked up at the ceiling with partly squinted eyes. So they called themselves _number._ Why would that make Jumba suspicious? Lilo laid her head against Stitch's shoulder once again. Stitch tightened his grip on her, as if not wanting her to leave, but she clearly didn't get the indication.

"Well, whatever they are, I still don't think they should be taken away." Lilo said. "And Cobra might do that."

"If he does," Jumba responded. "There is nothing you can be doing to stop him."

_Please take them away. Please take them away. Please take them away._ Was all Stitch thought as he tried to pull Lilo closer to himself.

"If they might be taken away tomorrow," Lilo said. "Then we need to help them make the most of today!"

With that, Lilo got up and left for Jumba's ship.

* * *

The three siblings Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire each sat in a different place on the bridge of Jumba's ship, or what used to be the bridge of Jumba's ship, but was now the master bedroom of a tourist sham Pleakly once came up with called a 'bed and not breakfast'. 

Ruby lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling, one pair of hands behind her head, and another pair stretched off to the sides. Ruby signed, and looked over at Emerald. She was sitting alone on an office chair at the other side of the room looking out the window of the air lock and twiddling her tendrils.

"I thought they would be nicer than this." Ruby said to Emerald. "I thought…. Stitch would be nicer."

"It's infinitely easier to love someone you grew up with than someone you've never met before." Sapphire spoke before Emerald could answer.

Ruby sat up and turned around to see him typing away furiously at the terminal on one of Jumba's terminals. Sapphire paused, and turned his seat around to face Ruby.

"Still," Sapphire continued. "I too couldn't help but approach him as if he were the Stitch that we all use to know. It must be that there are some feelings that rational thinking simply cannot overpower."

"Well Lilo's still as nice as ever." Ruby responded.

"I just can't get over Lilo being so small." Emerald cut in, not turning from the window.

"I love it!" Ruby replied enthusiastically. "I finally get to play with a Lilo that's my own size."

Emerald finally turned to face Ruby. "I wish I could enjoy things as easily as you can."

"Aka tiki ba-ba!" Ruby shouted back. "Just don't think as much!"

"Easy for you to say." Sapphire got in his last comment before turning his chair back to the terminal and continued typing away.

Everyone continued to sit silently for some time, with the exception of Sapphire incessant typing.

Ruby sighed. "I miss Angel."

"We all do." Emerald answered.

They all sat there for a bit longer until…

"Hey! What's up?"

All three siblings stopped what they were doing and turned around to see Lilo in the doorway to the cockpit/master bedroom of the ship.

"Lilo!" Ruby shouted as she immediately jumped out of bed, ran up to Lilo and threw her into the air with a spin, and then caught her coming down. Lilo landed in ruby's arms laughing. A slight push from Lilo told Ruby it was time to let her go and she place Lilo on the ground.

Emerald walked up to Lilo with her hands clasped in front of her and bowed slightly on reaching her.

"Aloha Lilo." Emerald said. "What brings you here?"

"Well…" Lilo answered. "I was just thinking I could take all of you out for a night on the town."

"I would love that." Emerald said, bowing again.

"What about you Ruby?"

Ruby nodded enthusiastically and clasped all four of her hands together.

"And how about you?" Lilo looked at Sapphire at the front of the bridge. He seemed to not have noticed her.

"What's he doing?" Lilo whispered into Emerald's ear.

"You can never tell with him." Emerald answered. "You should ask him yourself."

Lilo walked over to Sapphire, still not seeming to notice her.

"Hey blue guy!" Lilo shouted at him while she was right at his side. Sapphire jumped and yelped in reaction, bringing out a single, smothered giggle from Lilo. Sapphire turned to look at her, and stared as if confused for just a second.

"Oh Lilo! Hello." Sapphire said.

"What are you doing?" Lio asked.

"Huh? Oh, I was just attempting to distract myself from the anxiety of tomorrow's inevitable confrontation by combining Bay's Theorem with the principles of fluid dynamics to try and find a system that could predict patterns in the global state of economic flux. So far I've only had the most marginal of success."

Lilo stared at Sapphire with one eyebrow raised for some time before he spoke again.

"I'm doing very complicated stuff."

"Oh!" Lilo responded. "Well, how would you like to come with me to me the town?"

Sapphire put his hand to his chin and for a few seconds, clearly deep in thought. "Well, I've always found that meaningless wandering and interaction makes for far better distraction than my solitary pursuits, so I accept."

"Yeah!"

Lilo walked outside Jumba's ship, closely followed by Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire. They all walked along side each other for what was the equivalent of several blocks until they reached the driveway of their household.

Lilo and her new companions looked over toward the parking space beneath the house. Nani stood above her jeep, hood open, shaking her head. Tools and pieces of the engine were scattered about, and Nani's hands had now turned solid black.

Sapphire immediately ran from his group to Nani.

Feeling a furry paw on her leg, Nani turned to look down, expecting to see Stitch. What she instead saw was a smaller version of Stitch with lighter colors.

Nani frowned at Sapphire. "Thanks to you, we only have one car now."

"I can fix it if you want me to." Sapphire responded.

"No thanks. I'll have Jumba fix it in the morning."

Sapphire lowered his head and drooped his ears. He spoke softly. "I was only trying to help."

"You can help by-"

"I'm taking them out to see Kokaua."

Nani looked up slightly to see Lilo and the other two creatures had just arrived. Lilo put her arms on Sapphire's shoulders, and he responded by resting his head on her hand.

"If that's ok with you." Lili finished.

"It's ok with me," Nani said. "as long as you keep them out of my house."

Ruby also drooped her ears at that comment.

"Come on." Lilo reassured them. "It'll be ok."

Lilo and her new group started down the dirt path to the road while Nani turned to go back into her house.

When they finally reached the end of the path, who would be standing there with his arms crossed and an angry glare but Stitch.

Everyone stopped at seeing Stitch, not knowing what he'd do next.

"Gaba bah kuma yocha Lilo uga taba?" Stitch asked in a harsh voice.

Lilo couldn't understand what Stitch meant by that, something about going away, but she still didn't know how to answer.

"I was going to take them all out to see kokaua." Was the best that Lilo could come up with. Stitch's frown showed no sign of letting up.

It was fortunate that for her that Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire all seemed to understand what Stitch meant.

Emerald stepped up toward Stitch, and bowing to him, spoke in as gentle a voice as she could muster. "If it would make any difference, we would be delighted if you would come with us. I'm sure Lilo would appreciate the company of someone she already knows."

Stitch was dumbstruck by Emerald's comment. These things that came here to steal Lilo's attention away from him now wanted him to keep her company? Stitch stared at them wide eyed and jaw dropped.

"Please come with us." Ruby said with the cutest begging eyes she could bring out of herself.

Whatever the circumstances, it meant Stitch wouldn't be left alone, so he had no choice but to accept. Stitch slouched over and sighed. "Okie taka."

"Oh, but first," Lilo said suddenly. "To fit in, you all need to pretend your dogs. That means, you'll all need to hide your extra limbs and such."

"We never needed to do that before." Ruby said.

Emerald then smacked ruby on the back of the head just as she had finished talking. Ruby looked back at Emerald rubbing her head.

All three siblings looked at each other. Sapphire just shrugged his shoulders, seeing as how he didn't have any extra limbs, but the other two gave a demonstration that truly surprised Stitch.

Emerald pulled all three pairs of tendrils back into her body. Ruby retracted her extra pair of arms, quills, and antennae, in the same fashion that Stitch does.

Stitch was both shocked, and somewhat angered by this display. Even though Lilo had just assumed they had the ability to hide their extra limbs, Stitch knew better. He and 625 were supposed to be the only ones capable of doing that, and since 625 never used his extra limbs, that means he was the only one who really does do that.

* * *

"First things first," Lilo said. "Everyone here gets a cone of shaved ice." 

Lilo had led her new group downtown where she knew a particular shaved ice vendor who always set up shop in front of the grocery store on Sunday.

Lilo walked up to the vendor, all four experiments close behind her.

"five shaved ices please." Lilo asked the vendor with, smiling and with her eyes closed.

"Sorry." The vendor responded. "But da' machines broke. I'm just waiting for da' repair guy to get here."

"I knew I should've gone to Slushy's stand." Lilo muttered under her breath.

Just then, "Hey! What's your uh… pet doing!" The vendor shouted out.

Sapphire had just taken one of the panels off the shaved ice machine and had stuck half his body inside, busily taking apart and putting back together many different pieces. Like that, the machine started working again, and Sapphire pushed himself out.

The vendor was stunned by what he just saw. He leaned over the machine staring down at the little Sapphire who now had a burnt piece of metal in his hand.

"How did he do that?" The vendor asked.

"I don't know." Lilo responded.

Seeing as how Lilo couldn't answer the question, Sapphire turned toward the vendor and answered himself. "It seems the last person who tried to repair this had crossed the primary ac and dc wires, blowing both fuses. I simply set the wires back in place, and replaced the fuses with bundles of staples. It should hold for at least another ten hours, plenty of time for the repair man to show up and replace them with proper fuses."

The vendor stared down at Sapphire without moving, as if he'd just seen a ghost. Sapphire looked back up at him and seeing his face, lowered his ears and spoke once again.

"I mean… arf, arf?"

"Let's get out'a here!" Lilo shouted out as she ran away. All four experiments following her.

Lilo sat on the bench at the edge of downtown in front a trinket shop. _The Colors of Pele_ it was called, and it was closed that day. It was only open during tourist season, which was obvious from the name. Any place with name that blatantly cheesy was only open during tourist season.

"That was so cool!" Lilo shouted out to Sapphire sitting on the bench next to her. "I bet that's what you were designed for, fixing machines!"

"Actually it's just a gift." Sapphire answered. "I was never really designed for anything in particular. None of were actually."

"Well, I still think it's cool."

Stitch, the only one of the three sitting on the ground in front of the bench, lowered his head and whimpered.

"Well if it isn't wierdlaaaggghhh!"

All five of them looked up to see Myrtle, and her trio of yes girls Elena, Yuki, and Teresa standing in front of them. Myrtle had a face of utter shock, though the other three simply looked with interest at Lilo's new companions.

"You got more of them!" Myrtle shouted out. "You got more mutant freak dogs!"

"Cool!" Elena said suddenly.

Myrtle gave Elena a cold stare and she shrunk back.

"Oh," Lilo said looking at her for only a second. "Hi Myrtle." And then turned her head back to Sapphire.

"Myrtle?" Ruby suddenly stood up and shouted out. "Mytlre Edmonds?"

"Aaahhhhhh!" Myrtle and her entire trio screamed out in unison.

"It can talk!" Myrtle screamed, pointing at Ruby and backing away along with the rest of her group.

Emerald clenched her hands to her head and grimaced in pain, on the verge of screaming herself as Ruby hopped down and continued talking to Myrtle.

"I remember you." Ruby said. "You managed that Hooters bar next to the airport!"

Lilo suddenly looked up at Myrtle awestruck. Myrtle herself as well as her trio of yes girls all gasped in unison at what they had just heard. Myrtle's face turned bright red and she grit her teeth and anger. She no longer cared whether or not this thing could talk.

"How dare you talk to me like that!" Myrtle shouted back at Ruby. "I would never slump that low, right girls?"

Myrtle turned around turned around expecting to hear the usual _yeaaah!_ coming from her well trained friends, but instead she saw them giggling. They all stopped though, when they saw Myrtle glaring at them as if ready to go on a killing spree.

"But that was the only job you could get!" Ruby continued "After driving your mother's real estate business into bankruptcy after just two years that is."

Myrtle turned back around and stuck her finger right in Ruby's face. "I will never slump that low!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. "And don't you ever say that again!"

Myrtle stomped off with her friends in close tow.

Ruby stood motionless, looking at Myrtle storming off into the distance. What could possibly have made her so upset? Ruby just didn't understand this. But her attention was quickly stolen away by Lilo.

"That was the awesomest thing I've ever seen!" Lilo shouted at Ruby. "How did you know how to push Myrtle's buttons like that?"

"Push her buttons?" Ruby said softly. "But everything I said was true."

Lilo looked at Ruby confused for a second. "Well still, that was awesome!"

Stitch looked up at Lilo praising ruby, and whimpered again.

Lilo suddenly turned around after feeling a hand on her shoulder. Emerald was looking at her.

"Is Myrtle mean to you?" Emerald asked.

"How did you know?" Lilo answered.

"You don't seem to have any mean spirit in you, yet you enjoyed it when she was embarrassed in front of her friends."

"Well, she calls me Wierdlo. And even though I try to be her friend, she never let's me spend time with her and always makes fun of me."

"She doesn't think your weird."

"She doesn't?"

"She's resents you because you seem to be happy, and she's not. I think it's because her mother doesn't pay any attention to her."

"How do you know all this?"

"From her voice tone, the way she holds herself up, how she seems to need all of her friends to be submissive to her. It all speaks wonders on how she feels about her own life."

"That's incredible… You're the most insightful person I've ever met."

Emerald lowered her head and blushed slightly at Lilo's comment.

Stitch, listening in on the whole conversation, lowered his head and sighed, and then ran off into the distance. Seeing this, Ruby and Sapphire both took off after him.

"Wait up Stitch!" Ruby shouted out at him.

"What's wrong?" Sapphire also shouted.

Lilo and Emerald turned toward Stitch running away.

"What's wrong with Stitch?" Lilo asked.

"I think he's jealous that you're paying more attention to us than to him."

Lilo turned back toward Emerald. "Really?"

Emerald turned back toward Lilo and nodded. "You should spend as much time as possible with him tomorrow."

"But I don't know how much time I'll get to spend with the three of you."

Emerald lowered her head and sighed. "I'll let you in on a little secret. The three of us aren't even supposed to be here."

"Well then…" Lilo said. "Where are you supposed to be?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you. All I can say is, the reason we're here is because we have to stop something that's not supposed to happen."

"What is it?"

"I can't tell you that either. But I can say that, since we're not supposed to be here, even though we enjoy you're company so much, you should really be spending more time with Stitch than with us."


	6. Chapter Six

I know I said that I would wait until I was done with Empire of the Pacific before returning to write Gems of Tomorrow, but I feel now that I have enough inspiration to continue with it right now. Plus, I've kind of reached a snag with Empire of the Pacific. I have plans to do a chase scene and then a fight scene as the next chapter but I kind of don't know how I'm going to pull that off. That's why I haven't updated in two weeks. Well... that and I've been hacking up solid black phlegm while seeing double for about four days. After that my internet went down for a few more days. After that I was kind of preoccupied by a little plastic box called Breath of Fire 2. I'd just like to let you all know that I'm still alive.

I would like to take special time to thank two people for giving me the kind of inspiration I needed to continue with this story the way I am. For a while I was speaking with both Ri2 and Bluefox Gantu's Lover and Mate about potential ideas for the continuing of this story. I couldn't possibly have come up with the material I have now without the support of you two.

Ri2, thank you.

Bluefox, thank you.

About this fic. What's probably going to happen is that this story is eventually going to become M rated. Now I could use creative prose to avoid that happening but, at this point I really don't want to. I want to express what my characters are going to go through in as raw and unfiltered a form as possible, and to do that, I'm eventually going to have to change the rating to M. I'm saying this now because anyone who wishes to keep reviewing my story will either have to put it on their alert list, or unhide M rated fics from the menu when it happens. I don't want the number of reviews this thing gets to drop after changing the rating.

I think I'm going to write a couple more chapters here before moving back to _Empire of the Pacific_ because I just left that one off on the perfect note of anticipation.

I didn't include quite as much in this chapter as I would've liked, so the next chapter will be up fairly soon, as well as being fairly short. Just to let you know.

* * *

It was five in the morning on Sunday. The only light out was the light of the stars and the moon, and that was barely enough to see a few feet in front of one's face. On the dirt driveway of the Pelekais, the only sounds were the rustling of leaves as the wind blew through the trees, and the occasional chirp of a Coqui Frog, which thankfully was only intermittent, as for some reason they had never been able to proliferate on Kauai as they have on the other large islands. It was unusually cold that night, for a summer night. The only smells were those of the salt air, and a sudden rush of ozone. 

A sudden rush of ozone wasn't right, especially since it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The Coqui frogs knew there was something wrong. For miles they all stopped croaking in only a heartbeat. They weren't the only things that were taken aghast by whatever it was that seemed to be hanging in the air. Spiders in the centers of their webs crawled out to hide on the ends of their anchor lines, or dropped out completely to hide beneath a rock or piece of stubble. Birds sleeping in the treetops woke up and flew away to find another place to rest, even to the extent of abandoning their own chicks. Geckos scurried out of their hiding places and away from the Pelekai house as fast as they could, seemingly uncaring about exposing themselves to predators.

It soon became clear why this all happened.

It was much like the previous night, too much like the previous night. The cool air turned hot. The light breeze from the east was swept aside by an incredible updraft coming straight from the ground, or so it seemed. The updraft was followed by thick white fog. The fog poured out of the ground faster and thicker than as if a ton of dry ice was suddenly thrown into hot water. The updraft lifted the fog up into the air to blanket almost half of Kokaua in itself. The pouring fog didn't die down, in fact it just gained intensity. From the epicenter of the phenomenon, the fog billowing out of the ground shot up in a colum almost a hundred feet tall.

From the center of the colum of fog, slowly emerged four small creatures, though some noticeably much larger than others. As they walked out of the fog, their silhouettes would become more and more visible. Soon, one could tell that these were not strangers, but creatures that were well known to these parts.

The first was a small creature, roughly two feet tall with a pair of three foot antennae sticking out of its head and waving about randomly. One might think of Stitch when one saw this thing in the distance, but its antennae gave it away. Stitch's antennae were barely eight inches long. It's head also gave it away as different. While Stitch's head was mostly round, the head of this creature was more triangular.

The second to emerge was very small. From its silhouette masked in all the smoke, one might think of it as an enlarged squirrel, except for that its tail was thin like a rat's. As it walked further and further from the impenetrable column of fog its shape was more distinctive. It wasn't even a mammal; it was reptile. It was a lizard with a barb-ended tail.

The third was massive. It had to have been five feet tall. Four arms jutted out from its sides, each longer than its own body. The bulk this creature carried with it was immense. It looked like a huge walking stone slab. How it managed to walk with the kind of grace that it did with the kind of bulk fit carried could raise eyebrows.

The fourth and final was larger only than the second. Its shape was generally that of a chicken. It walked like a chicken, bobbing its head back and forth as it did so. But it clearly wasn't a chicken. Like the others, except for the second, its head was a full third of its body, and had no beak for that matter. It had arms as well, arms with hands and fingers. But as it emerged from the colum of smoke, its body lifted off of the ground and began to change. Its arms and legs shrunk into its sides, and its head pulled back into its body until the creature seemed little more than a large balloon with a face. The creature then lit up with a yellow glow, revealing each of these creatures in detail.

Sparky, Melty, Kixx, and Zap.

Something was different about them. None of them had any color to their bodies any more. All their skins and their furs were now a pasty dull gray. Their faces had no expression on them. They looked to be single minded and dead, and probably were. Even more frightening than their skin was their eyes. Each of them used to have a distinct eye color. Their eyes used to shine in these colors, a beacon to those who were looking for them. Their eyes now were all the same. They were all now dirty tan. But the most telling thing about them of all was that on each of their chests was branded a serial number: 221-C7, 228-C8, 601-C9, and 603-CA.

The fog behind them finally ceased pouring out of the ground. The updraft halted allowing the slight breeze from the ocean to continue. The air began to cool down, and what fog remained started to even out all over Kokaua.

The twisted mockeries of experiments set about to inspect the house standing in front of them. Melty dashed toward the house like a ferret and hopped his way up the stairs. He stopped to look at the front door for only a moment, cocked his head to the side, and then turned to the right. He ran up to the wall and climbed up to the window. Looking inside he could see there seemed no one there. His eyes darted about the room. Every time they stopped, they would flash a bright white.

Sparky glowed a bright yellow and shot down the driveway to the street below. He took a left and corkscrewed up a telephone pole, reverting to his normal self as he reached the top. Standing atop the pole, he could get a bird's eye view of the area of the Pelekai house. He surveyed the landscape, his eyes flashing at regular intervals.

Kixx looked to his left, then his right, and then forward. His eyes caught something interesting to him. It was Nani's jeep. Kixx walked over to the jeep and eyed it curiously. It looks as if half the engine had been removed, and the pieces were all spread out on the ground in such perfect neatness as to look like something out of a book of assembly instructions. Kixx looked toward the jeep, his eyes flashed. He looked toward the parts sprawled out all over the ground, his eyes flashed again.

Zap slowly rose above the ground and slowly began to encircle the house, glancing in every window to look for any signs of activity. There were none. Seeing this, he lifted himself up toward the very highest point of the house, the point he was looking for, the metal dome. Zap circled around the dome several times, eyeing the insides through the windows before stopping in front of one.

Looking inside, Zap found exactly what he expected to see. Right in front of him, Lilo was asleep in her bed contoured to fit the wall. She was curled only halfway into the fetal position and held a makeshift green doll with button eyes to her stomach. Her blanket lay haphazardly across her waist and a slight bead of saliva trailed down from the side of her mouth onto her pillow. The glow from Zap's body made Lilo wince her face in her sleep and roll over so she was no longer facing the window.

Across the room Stitch lay in his own bed in just the opposite manner. Stitch was laying flat on his back with his arms and legs outstretched to his sides as far as they would go. Stitch's blanket had been thrown down onto the floor and his tongue hung out the side of his mouth and was now laying on the bed next to him. In his sleep, Stitch would mumble incoherently and flick his ear on occasion.

Zap's eyes flashed three times briefly filling the room with light. He then descended back below the dome. Stitch slapped his face and groaned at the light. His eyes opened. In a jerk Stitch flung up and looked over across the room. There was just Lilo. There was nothing that shouldn't be there. Stitch cocked his head to the side.

"Gaba?" he whispered to himself.

Stitch groaned one more time and fell back down onto his back. It didn't take him five minutes to fall asleep again.

* * *

It was nine in the morning now. It was strange though. In the spring daytime on Kauai there it was usually extremely bright, or fairly dark from the sky being covered in clouds. Today was different. Today was shaded, but not dark. This was what Lilo and Stitch could tell from the kind of light filtering into their dome. They paid it no mind though, nor did it ever occur to them to wonder why this was, as they were currently distracted by each other. 

Stitch was sitting up on his bed with his back faced toward the room and resting his chin on his hands. What happened yesterday still floated in his memory and nagged at him like a Koi begging for food; it was impossible not to pay attention to it. Those things came here and took over. They came here and acted like they were the most welcome ohana, despite the fact that no one in this household had ever met them before. Now, they seemed to have wowed Lilo into their paws. They've proven to her that they're better than he was. Were they better than he was?

Lilo climbed up onto Stitch's bed and put her hand on his back. "I'm sorry if I made you feel like you're not good enough Stitch. I really am."

Stitch's only response was an especially heavy breath.

Lilo scooted a bit closer to him and moved her hand up his back, eventually resting it on his shoulder. "It's just that, I don't know what's going to happen to them once Cobra gets here, and I thought they needed to feel cared for in 'cause I know they're scared deep down inside."

Stitch shook his head swiftly, scaring Lilo just to the point of her lifting her hand from his shoulder. "Naga tasoopa! They find miga omuji!"

Stitch looked over to the shelf just at the foot of his bed. He stared straight toward a cylindrical object mostly covered by a towel. His eyes began to water. Lilo also looked at the object on the shelf.

"I see. They're not going to quit trying to help you about that if they find out." Lilo whispered just loud enough to be picked up.

"Naga." Stitch whispered, shaking his head.

"Even though there isn't anything that can help."

"Ih."

All was quiet for some moments until Lilo put her arm around Stitch's shoulder and began to whisper into his ear.

"I'll tell you what Stitch. Emerald said to me that they're really not supposed to be here."

Stitch lifted his head up at hearing Lilo's comment. "Gaba?"

Lilo nodded her head. "She said they're only here because they have to do something, and when they're done they have to leave. I think you should be a bit nicer to them because they really seem to like you and they're going to have to leave pretty soon, if not with Cobra, than somewhere else."

Stitch sighed and put his chin back in his paws.

Lilo and Stitch rode the elevator of their dome down to the hallway where their heads immediately perked up as a sweet and yeasty smell. Their noses told them someone had got up early to make a great breakfast this morning, and they both had a suspicion of who it was. Those suspicions were confirmed when.

"I thought I told the three of you to stay in Jumba's ship!"

Lilo and Stitch ran from the hallway to the entrance of the kitchen where they found Nani in her morning robe yelling at Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire all sitting at the kitchen table.

"We're only trying to be nice!" Ruby pleaded at Nani.

Nani rested her forehead I her hand for a second and then looked back up at the three creatures sitting at her table. "I understand that, but think of it from my perspective. Three experiments Jumba has no memory of creating suddenly decide to come bunking with me in my house? Do you have any idea how the grand councilwoman might react if she found out about this from somewhere other than this household? Do you know what kind of situation that puts me in?"

Lilo and Stitch watched the conversation from the corner of the kitchen doorway. Emerald noticed them peaking out and shot them a quick glance and a smile before turning back to Nani.

"Actually Nani," Emerald said softly. "I know exactly what kind of situation this puts you in. We've had more than our fair share of dealings with the grand council woman."

"Let me guess." Nani interrupted. "She won't remember this either."

"No I'm afraid she won't. But please listen to me. You do understand there are some things in this world that are more important than what happens to you."

"Well if you tell me what those things are I might just believe you."

There was an uncomfortable pause for quite a few seconds. Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire all gave each other glances, and then looked back at Nani.

"But you're not gonna' tell me what those things are, are you?"

Sapphire lowered his head and shook it slowly.

All three experiments and Nani jumped at the sound of the doorbell ringing.

"That must be Cobra now." Nani whispered to herself.

Nani turned around and walked out of the kitchen toward the door. Lilo and Stitch both got out of the way just quick enough to avoid having her run into them. Amazingly, she didn't notice them in her hurry, and they both rushed into the kitchen when her back was turned toward them.

The face of Ruby lit up with excitement as soon as they entered.

"Stitch! Lilo!"

Ruby jumped out of her seat hard enough to knock it over and ran toward them on all fours. Stopping only inches in front of them, she stood up with her arms outstretched, and then froze in place. Stitch was glaring at her with arms folded across his chest, narrowed eyes and just the tips of his teeth showing. Ruby lowered her arms and backed up just a few steps.

Lilo was confused. She was expecting rub to drown her in a huge hug, but she didn't. Lilo looked toward Stitch to see what might've been wrong, and she did see what was wrong.

"Stitch!" Lilo whispered loudly. "What did I tell you?"

Stitch hunched over and let out a sigh, unfolding his arms and letting them hang out at his side. He just as quickly righted himself and forced a half-assed smile out of his mouth. "Hi… Ruby."

Ruby's face beamed with the excitement again that she showed when she first saw Lilo and Stitch enter the kitchen.

"Hi Stitch!" She shouted out, and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her. Stitch tried to push back, but his feet wouldn't hold their own on the floor. He tried to struggle against her arms, but his own arms couldn't break free. Could it be that Ruby was even stronger than he was? The thought maddened him, but at the same time it made him realize that there was no use struggling. Stitch gave up and groaned into Ruby's hug, which was over very quickly, much to his relief.

Stitch looked up to find himself surrounded by Emerald and Sapphire as well. Emerald made her usual bow to Stitch and Lilo while Sapphire stood in place, drinking orange juice straight from the carton.

"Good morning Sitch, Lilo." Emerald said, taking the right hand of both of them in two tendrils each. "We made you crepes with sour cream and fruit filling for breakfast."

"You polluted the recipe with too much flour." Sapphire butted in before Lilo could thank Emerald. "You were only supposed to use point six five liters. You were also supposed to use double-soft cake flour instead of all-purpose."

Emerald cringed for only a split second and then grabbed Sapphire by the back of the neck and whispered quite angrily into his ear, "Sapphire this is neither the time nor the place for your anal retentiveness!"

Emerald let go of Sapphire and after a sigh, looked up at Lilo and Stitch who were both giving her curious looks. Sapphire lowered her head and visiblyblushed upon realizing that they' both seen what she had done.

"Do you have anger issues?" Lilo asked.

"Not usually, but sometimes." Sapphire answered for Emerald, now rubbing the back of his neck.

But before Emerald could respond she saw something out of the corner of her eye, and turned to look at the kitchen entrance. Ruby, Sapphire, Stitch, and Lilo also turned to look out to the kitchen entrance.

Cobra bubbles was standing straight up like a statue with his arms folded. Nani stood behind him with a worried look on her face.

"How long have you been there?" Sapphire asked.

"Long enough to see that you are trying to impress me with a fancy breakfast." Cobra answered in his typical stone voice. "I will tell you right now that it won't affect my decision."

"But it was easy for us!" Ruby shouted her response as soon as Cobra was done. "We work as caterers!"

"Ruby!" Emerald growled under her breath.

Ruby lowered her head and drooped her ears. "But you weren't supposed to know that."


	7. Chapter Seven

You know, I told you all that this chapter would be up pretty soon. Unfortunately I said that two weeks before finals, so that kind of did in my assurance right then and there. Fortunately, I'm taking summer off, and I'm going to dedicate myself to writing every day when I'm at it. So expect plenty of updates starting the week after next.

* * *

Everyone and everything seemed uneasy. Then again it was difficult not to be uneasy in front of the man sitting down at the kitchen table. A strange aura of impending doom seemed to follow this man wherever he went. Even now, when all he was doing was sitting in his chair, looking down curiously at the plate in front of him with three perfect steaming crepes, one couldn't help but feel as if horrible things would happen if you became too accustomed to his presence. So what was one to do when faced with this kind of company? Sit and stare like an idiot of course!

Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire all sat at the opposite end of the kitchen table from Cobra Bubbles. They stared at him. He stared back. Lilo and Stitch, sitting atop the counter next to the fridge, watched anxiously, each for their own reason. Nani stood up stiff as a board at the doorway to the kitchen. Jumba stood up just as straight at the other end of the kitchen, paying no notice to the plateful of crepes he held in his hand. His eyes were fixed on the trio that sat just opposite of Cobra, analyzing and scrutinizing their every word and every flinch, even though there was nothing to analyze or scrutinize at the moment. Pleakly stood directly behind Nani, just peaking out from her shoulder, as if hiding behind her. No one said a word or made a single move, except to sometimes blink their eyes when they became too dry.

With each passing moment of uncomfortable nothing, the tension became thicker. It ran so thick eventually that one could almost smell it in the air. Something had to break.

"They're not poisoned!" Sapphire blurted out from seemingly nowhere.

All eyes were now on Sapphire, except Emerald's. At Sapphire's comment, Emerald giggled to herself under her breath so as it sounded like a snort, but the intent was still clear. Now she found Cobra's eyes directed at her. Emerald's heart quickened suddenly, not at this man's gaze, but at that he had just noticed what she did.

Emerald lowered her head and blushed slightly under her green fur. Just as quickly she turned toward Sapphire. "That was in poor taste."

Sapphire glanced at Emerald for just a second, and then back at Cobra, whose attention was focused once again on him.

"I appreciate that." Cobra said as nonchalantly as most people could muster, though for him it wasn't much of a feat.

Cobra looked down at his plate for a few seconds, and then back up at the three creatures sitting in front of him. They were still staring at him. Slowly and methodically, as if he were disarming a bomb, Cobra lifted up his fork, cut off a piece of crepe, and ate it. A great tension seemed to be relieved by this action. You could tell because the shoulders of everyone there seemed to slump down as soon as he swallowed. Everyone but Stitch that is.

At last Cobra began to speak on his own initiative. "You say you work as caterers. Would you mind telling me where at?"

Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire all looked at each other and then turned back to Cobra. Sapphire was the only one to shake his head.

"Why not?"

Sapphire spoke up. "If you knew why we're here, it may destroy everything we know."

Cobra raised one eyebrow. "That would not be fortunate."

"No it wouldn't." Emerald answered.

"Lilo and Stitch and everybody would…"

Emerald extended the tendril on her head and lightly pressed it against Ruby's mouth before she could finish. Ruby looked at her to see her shaking her head with a stern look.

"I think it would be best if you didn't talk right now." Emerald said softly. Ruby gave a quick nod of agreement, and Emerald retracted her tendril back toward her head.

"We would what?" Lilo suddenly shouted out as she hopped down from the countertop and ran over to Ruby. Even in this moment, Ruby couldn't help but to react by reaching down and grabbing Lilo by the armpits, and tossing her up onto her lap.

Lilo laughed at this. Jumba squinted as he saw it; Ruby seemed convinced that she was just another member of the family. Nani took a few steps forward until she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to find Pleakly shaking his head at her, and then turned back around to continue watching, now leaning against the kitchen wall. Stitch growled under his breath and clenched his fists, digging his claws into his own palms. This action didn't go unnoticed by Cobra, who's gaze shifted quickly back and forth from Ruby and Lilo to Stitch, at last resting on Ruby and Lilo.

Lilo took one look up and saw Cobra staring at her with that expressionless face. She forgot what it was she asked as a new thought popped into her head.

"They say they work as caterers didn't they?" Lilo pleaded with Cobra. "That means they've already found their one true place! That means you don't have to do anything with them!"

"Found it?" Ruby interjected. "We were always there!"

Emerald dropped her head into her hand and grumbled out. "What did I just tell you?"

Ruby yelped just audibly and twiddled together the index fingers of her top hands. "Soka… No talking."

Cobra continued to speak. "Normally Lilo, I would agree with you, but as far as we know, these experiments aren't supposed to exist."

Ruby gave out a loud squeak at Cobra's comment, and then covered her own mouth with her top hands.

Cobra paid this only a second's mind before going on. "No one I have yet met has any knowledge of who they are or where they came from."

"But they're nice!" Lilo snapped back at him. "They cleaned the house and they made us breakfast!"

"I can attest to that!" Pleakly shouted out from the kitchen doorway.

"That still doesn't answer the question of who they are or where they came from." Cobra's attention shifted from Lilo and Ruby to Emerald and Sapphire. "And now you're saying you can't tell me any of these things?"

Sapphire gave a slight nod.

"Then at least you can tell me what it is you're trying to accomplish."

Emerald looked down and gave a slight sneer.

"However vague an answer you give me, it's still better than nothing."

"I would rather talk about that in private." Sapphire answered in place of Emerald.

Cobra nodded his head. "That's a good idea. In fact I'd like to talk to all of you in private… after I finish this fabulous breakfast of course."

* * *

All the curtains were closed in Jumba and Pleakly's bedroom. The ceiling light was off. The only light was from a small lamp on the desk shining directly at the bottom bunk bed where Emerald was sitting.

Cobra sat in Jumba's desk chair just next to the lamp. His hands were folded casually on his lap and one foot hung over the other knee.

"Since you refuse to speak of the beginning, it's little use to start there, so I'll begin with the middle." Cobra said softly. "What is it you're trying to accomplish?"

Emerald took a deep breath and sighed. She looked directly into his eyes, though she couldn't see them as they were covered in his shades, but it was a gesture she found comforted most humans. "What we know, and what you know, and what this family knows, is in danger."

For a time nothing more was said. Cobra finally conceded that she wasn't going to finish her statement, so he finished it for her. "And you wish to relieve this danger?"

There was no reaction from Emerald, except for the batting of her eyes.

"I can wait a long time for an answer."

"I am sorry Mr. Bubbles, but I do not have the confidence to give you your answer."

"Then who does?"

"Sapphire does. He knows how talking may effect our outcome."

* * *

"So what is it that is threatening your way of life as you know it?" Cobra asked as gently as he could, though it still came off as demanding and somewhat threatening.

Sapphire wasn't the type who could pick up on things like that, so he answered as though it was in casual conversation.

"Something horrible is going to happen soon. Me and my sisters have to gotta' it from happening."

"So just what is it you're trying to prevent from happening?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"I've calculated the odds of events unfolding as they should if anyone found out about what's really going on to be between twenty four point seven three six and three point two two eight percent… depending on who found out."

"Am I correct in assuming twenty four percent would be me?"

"Yeah, you're right about that, but it's still too big a risk to take."

"Have you ever considered that by not telling me, you may be forcing me to take action against you? What are the odds of things occurring the way they should if that happens."

"If it came down to that, there's nothing you can do to stop us."

"If that's the case, why do you cooperate with me to the extent that you do."

"It's ahh…"

"That's OK. I have only one more question for you. Why do the three of you seem to care so much for Lilo and Stitch?"

* * *

"Because they're Ohana!" Ruby jumped up from sitting to yell out the answer as fast as she could.

"So that means you know them quite well."

Ruby put her finger up to her bottom lip and looked up as if wondering.

"Well?" Cobra beckoned for an answer.

"I'm not supposed to talk about that."

"I see. Who says you're not supposed to talk about that."

"Juujjjrrrrrrrr Sapphire! Sapphire's the smartest person I know! Jumba says Sapphire's even smarter than he is! But he's not as creative, that's why he's Jumba's assistant. He's also not very strong. That's why I look after him. I'm his bodyguard. He also doesn't talk very much."

"So you all know Jumba as well."

Ruby paused and blinked several times. "I'm not supposed to talk about that."

"I can respect that. Can you tell me about your job as a caterer."

"Oh yeah! We work at theeee…. … At a big buffet! We make breakfasts every other day and dinners every Saturday and Sunday. Everybody loves us, especially me because they say I'm the sweetest of them all!

"Emerald also plays piano and violin! She can play guitar and drums too, but she doesn't like doing that in front of other people. I don't know why she doesn't like that."

"So you all have good lives?"

"Very good." Ruby said as she nodded her head enthusiastically.

"I can see why you would want to protect that. So what is it that has you so scared?"

* * *

"I dunno'!" Nani shouted out as she swung her hands in the air. "They just showed up two days ago acting like they'd always been here! The blue one took apart my jeep."

"I'm just asking because they all seem to give the impression that they've known you for some time." Cobra tried his best to speak in a calming voice to reassure Nani that he didn't suspect her of anything. It didn't seem to be working.

"I swear to you I've never seen or heard of them until two days ago."

"What do you think this is?"

"Me? I think this some sick joke Jumba's pulling on us. I bet he's laughing his head off right now at all of this."

"Jumba knows better than any of us what would happen to him if he tried to pull a stunt like that. Nonetheless, he is the only place I can think of to find any answers."

"Than go ask him."

* * *

"I am swearing that I did not create them!" Jumba shouted out at Cobra as if he were yelling at someone who had just accused him of something ludicrous.

"You know how suspicious this looks for you." Cobra replied in as totally calm and detached a manner as he always carried. It was amazing considering he was staring down a seven-foot tall humanoid hippo who seemed ready to attack at any moment.

Jumba folded his arms before bursting out in anger and sat back down on his bunk. "I am doubting they are even experiments at all." He muttered just loudly enough for Cobra to hear.

"What do you mean?"

Jumba turned back toward Cobra with a different look on his face. This was a chance to explain something. That always brought his mood up. Jumba was wild with his hands as he began talking.

"You see Mr. Bubbles, all experiments are referring to themselves under pretext of experiment. Experiment 6-2-9, 6-3-0, and 6-3-1 are what they should be calling themselves if they are indeed being experiments. But they do not. They are referring to themselves under pretext of number, not experiment. Number 6-2-9, 6-3-0, and 6-3-1. This is not being how an experiment would behave."

"Despite this, the very fact that they give themselves numbers connects them to you. You know what would happen if the federation got word of this. The only reason they didn't sign your death warrant after the incident with 6-2-7 was because the problem seemed to take care of itself. Imagine their reaction to this."

"Again! I am swearing I was not creating them! They are not even experiments, so what is there for to be worry over?"

"What's there to worry over is that no one in this household seems to know who they are, yet they seem to know all of you."

Jumba opened his mouth about to speak, but then paused. After a few seconds, he started to rub his chin with his hand. "Yes… that would be being something for to worry over." Jumba just as quickly snapped his attention back to Cobra personally. "I am assuming that you are to be vouching in my favor?"

"You assume correctly."

* * *

"Yeah… I was scared at first, but you should've seen what they did for the place!"

Pleakly was the easiest out of them all. Getting him to talk was like getting a child to eat his dessert, and he would ramble for hours if you let him. Then again, he was also the most useless.

"When I first woke up in the morning, the laundry was all done and folded and starched and laying on top of the dryer! They made us pancakes! The blue one is just so down to earth and thoughtful, and kind of shy and that just makes him so cute! The green one is the most polite and refined thing I've ever seen! Not at all like Jumba's other experiments. And the red one, oh how she just absolutely adores little Lilo I've never seen anything like that!

"I never thought I'd say this about Jumba's evil genius experiments but… I wanna' keep 'em! Can I?"

Cobra's answer was quick and simple. "No."

* * *

Cobra walked out into the living room with Pleakly following close behind. Everyone seemed on edge, each for a different reason. Though it was impossible to tell why, everyone was standing as far away from each other as possible. Lilo and Stitch at opposite ends of the couch. Jumba sat on the window cushion at the far end of the living room while Nani was in the kitchen doorway. Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire were all huddled together at the front door as if expecting what was to come to them.

Cobra walked out into the center of the room and Pleakly got into position in front of the TV. It was only a few seconds but it seemed like far longer before Cobra began to speak. What was known was that it was long enough for everyone present to exchange a glance with everyone else.

When Cobra at last spoke, everyone listened, again each for his or her own reason.

"My time spent here with you has influenced me a great deal in how I am going to present my case, but the fact of the matter is, what happens to these three experiments is not my decision to make. As such, what I am to do with them was already decided before I even set foot on this doorstep.

"Numbers 6-2-9, 6-3-0, and 6-3-1, are to be taken into custody, and their case pleaded to the Federation. After that, it's up to the Grand Council to decide what will happen to them."

"Wait!" Lilo screamed out and ran toward Cobra. "You can't do that."

Lilo kicked Cobra in the shin as hard as she could, with no apparent effect. She reared up to kick him again when Nani ran over to grab her.

Nani was outrun though, by three pairs or green ropes which wrapped themselves many times over around Lilo and lifted her into the air.

"Lemme' go! Lemme' Go! Lemme Go!" was all Lilo screamed as she tried in vain to struggle against the tendrils restraining her. Emerald brought Lilo down right in front of her and then unwrapped her.

"You can't just let him take you away like this!" Lilo screamed at Emerald this time.

"The more you struggle against this Lilo, the more it will hurt us and you in the end." Emerald spoke to her as softly as she could manage in a moment like this. And then, bringing a tendril behind Lilo's head, she pushed it close to herself, and whispered into her ear. "We can make Cobra understand just how urgent our needs our, and we will. He won't do anything to us."

After letting go of Lilo, she turned right back to Cobra, and acting as if she hadn't heard a word emerald said, "If you made up your mind before you got here, then why did you have to talk to us for so long!"

"I had to do that to determine what I would say about them to he Federation." Cobra answered. "And from what I've heard, I will try my hardest to have them released to their own devices. But I can't make any promises."

"Lilo." Nani interrupted. "This is what has to be done. I know you don't like it but that's just the way it is and there's nothing you or any of us can do about it."

"We'll be fine Lilo!" Ruby tried to reassure her.

"Then we should be going." Cobra spoke up, eager to get this over and done with as soon as possible.

Cobra turned around and walked out the door, the three siblings followed him until they came outside and saw what had happened.

Everything was covered in fog. It hung in the air thick and white so much so that it was difficult to see more than ten feet away. They all knew there was something wrong with this. The fog should've cleared up in only twelve hours. It shouldn't hang on like this.

Cobra stopped halfway down the steps and looked back up at the trio now seemingly stunned in fright.

"Is there something wrong?" He shouted up to them.

"It's all foggy!" Ruby shouted back.

"I know it's weird."

They all jumped at the sound of Pleakly's voice behind them, then they turned around to see him finish his statement.

It just appeared here this morning. The same thing happened the day you three showed up.

Without hesitating Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire turned around and ran back into the house, knocking Pleakly out of the way as they went.

"You can't stay here!"

"You're in danger!"

"They'll find you!"

All three of them shouted out at once to the very shocked household waiting inside.

"What are you talking about?" Nani said sternly.

"It's the fog!" Ruby shouted.

"It's not safe for you to stay here anymore." Emerald added.

"You have to leave right now!" And Sapphire finished.

"Why would fog be that dangerous?" Nani asked again sternly.

"I would be inclined to believe they know what they're talking about Nani."

Everyone turned toward the doorway to see Cobra standing there, breathing just a bit heavy from his sprint up the steps.

"I would do as they say if I were you."

Nani lowered her head and closed her eyes. Deep in thought for almost a minute, she tried to decide whether or not to listen to these things. It was better to be safe then sorry, and Nani spoke out.

"We can stay at David's. Cobra I want you to call me as soon as this whole thing blows over."

"Will do."

Cobra walked out the door once again, and once again the three siblings followed him out. Lilo ran out the door and watched them follow Cobra all the way to his car, and get I the back seat one by one, until she though she saw a light flash from off in the distance into the fog. Sapphire seemed to notice it as well, as he paused and looked off into the distance for a few seconds before he too got into the back seat of Cobra's car.

Lilo walked back into the house. Everyone was sad that this had happened, though each to a different degree. Even Nani was a worried. She wanted those things out of her house, yes, but she didn't want this to happen to them. Everyone was sad except for Stitch.

At last those things were out of his house, and out of his life. Whatever horror was going to come to them they'd be better off facing alone. At least now they won't get between him and Lilo. At least now they won't get between him and his countless nights of grieving, which he would never let himself get over because it made him feel ashamed whenever he tried.

Stitch didn't hesitate to run up to Lilo and wrap his arms around her. For the rest of the day he would shower her with affection until it nauseated him, just to get her to forget that those damn interlopers were ever here to begin with. So that she would be his alone again.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Author Notes:** I'm finally working on this again. YAY! After taking a week long break from writing, I found it was an incredibly difficult task to get myself back into that habbit. But now that I've completed this chapter, more should follow a bit more smoothly.  
To My Readers: I also currently have a Digimon story up called Digimon Rising. So far it only has one reviewer. I want more reviewers dammit! Bluefox, you should especially be interested in its subject matter. And no, the main Digimon character is in no way based on you. In fact I knew about Vulpamon LONG before I ever even met you.

**Story Notes:** Some people have asked me this, and yes, at its core, this is an Angel fic. However, this is NOT a rescue Angel fic. In fact, throughout this story, Angel will always be little more than a background element that will be referred to, but never actually used. I will never write a rescue Angel fic simply because it's been done so many times before. I don't have anything against them, but I prefer to stay outside the cliches. What's never been done before, is a story that uses Angel as a backdrop, rather than a main subject.

* * *

Keys were shoved into a slot. A lock clicked open. A door plain white door opened inward to a small, dark bluish hallway opening up into a room after about eight feet. Another click was heard and the room is flooded with a pale yellow light. 

Cobra walked inside and hung his coat on a small pine rack screwed to the wall just inside the door. He continued to past the hallway to into the room that waiting beyond it without so much as even glancing back at those behind him still at the entrance.

Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire stepped inside. They all turned their heads every which way as they walked forward, looking at what they never imagined would be there. The little one bedroom apartment was furnished meagerly at best. There were the basics yes, closet space, coffee table, a jean couch and an old TV standing on a table tray. Cobra sat on the couch, coatless, shadeless, tieless, and with the top button of his shirt undone, watching some local news channel, which was really little more than a string of ads with some news sprinkled in between.

Everything had a dulled and yellowish tint to it, not only from the lights, but from the stained drywall and the old shag carpet. Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire all seemed to be looking around in place and in slight wonder. Cobra's apartment was dull, dreary, and paltry. Sapphire looked down. Cobra's crumpled tie lay on the floor. Sapphire bent down to pick up the tie.

Sapphire looked up from the tie to see Cobra's attention had veered away from the TV. Cobra looked at him with one fleshy bag where an eyebrow should've been raised.

"Is there something wrong?" Cobra asked.

Sapphire stood motionless for a moment, blinking several times. Everything about this seemed bizarre, at least from what was known about Cobra Bubbles.

"I just expected-"

"Something a bit more lavish?" Cobra finished Sapphire's sentence. Sapphire nodded. "And for me to be neater than to throw my tie on the floor?" Cobra continued. Sapphire nodded again. "Perfection is for display purposes only. It's all part of the show."

"But I don't see any cameras anywhere!" Ruby suddenly exclaimed into the middle of the conversation.

"Then never you mind what I said." Cobra responded.

"What I believe Sapphire is trying to get at," Emerald cut in, stepping in front of Ruby. "is that we are used to far more… luxurious settings."

"Luxury is a state of mind." Cobra retorted.

Sapphire dropped Cobra's tie and took a few steps forward, standing next to Ruby, who was now peeking out from behind Emerald. Nothing about this man made any sense.

"Twenty years and this guy still makes no sense." Sapphire whispered.

"At least we know it's him then." Emerald whispered back.

Emerald understood what Cobra was saying. She wouldn't say what she was really thinking though. Sapphire found this man an enigma because he couldn't understand other people's behavior. Psychology was the study of something illogical, so Sapphire scarcely had the capacity to fathom it. Though he was far from robotic, he possessed all the feelings and the empathies of any other person, but his way of communicating was simple, direct, and totally candid, and he naturally assumed all others would share it. In that kind of world, truly understanding any kind of cultural eccentricities or inhibitions was all but impossible. That's what Emerald was thinking, but she dared not say it.

Cobra soon found all three of the, what seemed to be experiments, looking at him precariously. He stared right back at them. It was as if they were waiting for a sign from him to do something. This was not a comfortable situation for Cobra. In fact it kind of panicked him. Funny, for all the things he must've been through without flinching, it would be a staredown with what are in spirit were slightly bemused children would be what made him nervous. Whatever he felt, Cobra gave no sign of it, as it was something quite ironic for a social worker. Still, the situation had to be ended as soon as possible.

"Please." Cobra said. "Make yourselves at home. I don't have much, a laptop with DSL, basic cable, only the essentials in terms of food, and the couch has a futon for guests."

The trio dispersed, instantly relieving the social worker of his anxiety, so he could go back to the woman on TV babbling something about soil depletion from the sparse rainy season, and its effect on the local economy.

Emerald crawled around the floors exploring every possible corner of the living area of the small apartment. Eventually she led herself to the kitchen where she opened up the fridge. Not much was there, bacon and eggs, butter, milk and orange juice, bread, and a couple orange sodas, a six pack of stout, and a block of presliced cheddar. Ruby went to work. She tore open the plastic bag over the bread and dumped its entire contents into her mouth. It had some difficulty getting down, so she threw a whole can of orange soda into her mouth and crushed it in her jaws to wash it down.

"Ruby what are you doing?" Emerald screamed at the entrance of the kitchen as she saw Ruby stuffing half a dozen slices of cheese into her mouth.

"Whugh" Ruby yelled back incoherently, dropping orange soda soaked crumbs from her mouth.

"I told you to make yourselves at home," Cobra interrupted. "and that's exactly what she's doing."

Emerald turned toward Cobra and did her best to hide a sneer. As much as Ruby's behavior was embarrassing her at the moment, a guest does not disobey the commands of his or her host. After hesitating, Emerald clenched her fists and turned back to Ruby.

"Nothing." Emerald said. "Just carry on."

Ruby stared at Emerald walking away in just a bit of shock with her mouth still stuffed full of bread and cheese. She shrugged her shoulders and shoved the other half dozen slices of cheddar inside.

"Excuse me, Mr. Bubbles."

Cobra looked down to see Emerald standing just off to the side of the couch with her arms clasped behind her back. As soon as he looked at her, emerald gave a small bow, with all three pairs of her tendrils pressing against the floor. Emerald spoke again after lifting herself back up.

"What is to happen to us now?"

"My colleagues have been contacted before I came to pick you up." Cobra answered. "They will bring a communications uplink in three or four days which I'll use to contact Federation officials. They will deal with you as they see fit."

Emerald lowered her head and sighed.

"I see." She said. "Is there any way you may reconsider your course of action?"

"If you tell me everything you know, I'll think about it."

Emerald stood and stared in response to the question. As rude as such a thing was, she could bring herself to do nothing else. She blinked.

"I figured as much."

Emerald nodded her head at the answer and lifted herself off the ground with her tendrils to sit herself down on the couch opposite Cobra. The news lady on TV was spouting off something about an increase in crime rate. She blamed it on the recent surge in the Coqui Frog population on Big Island and Maui which are disturbing people's sleep. The news lady went on. Increasing gas prices have to increasing airline prices, and thusly to a drop in tourism. The Hawaiian independence movement has now started sending threatening letters to key people. A single intimidating speech from the governor has squelched their new tactic and they've returned to handing out flyers at public ceremonies.

Was it the news itself or what was happening that only emerald and her siblings were aware of? Either way it was infuriating to Emerald to see such trivial things being reported on as if they were so important. These people, their world, her world, was going to end, and the only ones capable of stopping it have been caught up in interstellar customs.

Emerald reached over to the coffee table with a tendril and picked up a brown clay coaster. With her tendril wrapped around its edges, Emerald flung the coaster at the TV like a skipping stone and it shattered on impact. It hit the power button dead on, and the TV turned off, as well as getting a few new scratches.

Had she been composed Emerald would've expected Cobra to be startled by her sudden move. Instead he sat there just as calm as he was before and turned his head toward her. His unusual reaction though, went unnoticed by her.

"Why did you do that?" Cobra asked calmly.

"I can't believe how god damn naïve those people are, that's why!" Emerald shouted back instantly.

Emerald froze her body and her breath. A sudden and uncomfortable wave of cold went up and down her making her fur stand on end as she stared at Cobra giving her a disapproving look. What just happened? Did she just loose it? And in front of a stranger no less. Loosing it in front of those who knew her was one thing, but this was inexcusable. Still, it had already happened, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Emerald could do nothing but begin to cry silently and motionlessly. Crying? That was even worse than her previous outburst of anger. Even so, she couldn't stop herself, only do the best she could to keep her composure while she was at it. Again, she wondered if it really was just her previous outburst, or perhaps the morons on TV who had no idea what was really important in the world. In the end, she settled on that it was her whole situation. The world she knew was doomed, and frivolous politics was keeping it doomed.

Whatever you do, don't sob. Don't sob. Don't sob.

The whole thing made Cobra very uncomfortable. His one and only weakness, interpersonal relations.

"I'm going to go to go to my room." Cobra said.

* * *

Cobra got up off the couch, and without looking back, walked down the hallway and toward his room. 

Instead of a sudden outpour, Emerald's tears strangely stopped with the absence of cobra, and a kind of physical relief swept through her. Why the hell couldn't that have happened before, when it would've been useful? Nothing angered Emerald more than loosing control of the situation. She was plenty angry now.

The doorknob to the apartment's only bedroom turned to the right. The only occupant of the room didn't seem to notice. The door opened to a room just as shabbily furnished as all the others. A queen sized bed on the floor without a frame was in the far corner. Blankets and pillows were haphazardly thrown on the bed. Next to the bed was a desk with a laptop and a small, portable printer. Opposite the desk was a very small and cheap looking dresser, too small to be used for clothes, which were obviously in the closet anyway.

The bottom dresser drawer was open. Ruby was there, rummaging through Cobra's belongings. Among old personal photographs, old coins, a few black and white baseball cards from the forties, a Damascus pocket knife with an ivory handle, also from the forties, and a seemingly out of place copy of last years tax return, was something that got Ruby's attention.

It was a zip top bag filled with assorted medals. There was an expert piston medal, two purple hearts, a silver star, and a navy cross. Though none of them Ruby was able to recognize, other than that they were military decorations.

Ruby opened the zip top bag and dumped the medals into her bottom left paw. She fingered them curiously.

A shadow swept over Ruby. She lifted her head and sniffed the air to see who it was.

"Were you in the army?" Ruby asked without turning to see Cobra behind her.

"Navy actually." Cobra responded. "I was a seal, among many other things."

* * *

The tiny kitchen of cobra's apartment opened up to a deck with just enough room to sit two people. To Sapphire though, this was more than enough. He looked out over the view of the neighborhood and the impending sunset over the calm ocean of the east shore, calm because the other islands were all in the way of the waves. From the rate the sun was going down, Sapphire calculated the sunset would begin in one hour, seventeen minutes and seven seconds. The view to him though, was nothing more than it's description. He was never much for views, so the sight before him wasn't doing much for him. It was not the reason he came out anyway. He wanted to be alone. 

Sapphire looked back through the sliding glass door. No one was visible except Emerald, and she was fast asleep on the couch. It was perfect. There was no one to interrupt him or even to spy on him.

Sapphire placed his fingers on the bottom of his throat and pushed hard. At the same time he pushed his other clenched fist against his stomach. It wasn't pleasant, but it got the job done. Sapphire hacked and choked until some he felt some large object travel up his throat. Sapphire hunched over and gave out one huge cough, and what looked to be a large glass coin flew out of his mouth onto the deck.

The coin landed on edge and started rolling. Sapphire lunged after it and pinned it to the floor with his whole body, even though just reaching over and picking it up would've been just as effective. Such behavior was a different kind of Sapphire. His emotions got the better of him this instance, in any instance that dealt with that glass coin he carried in his stomach.

He cupped the coin in both hands up to his nose. He held it the same way one would hold a tiny baby animal, afraid that the slightest mistreatment might hurt it. His nose fogged up the surface when he breathed out, and cleared it when he breathed in, only to fog it up again on his next exhale.

Holding the coin so close to him, the detail was revealed. It looked more like two coins connected by an invisible force with a gap of only a millimeter between them.

Sapphire grabbed the top piece in one hand, and the bottom piece in the other, and twisted. His hand turned to static, almost like television static, until he moved it out of the way. The static cleared, and in its place was a kind of 3-D photograph of a woman who looked very much like Nani. Not totally like Nani though, there were some differences. She was just a bit shorter, and not quite as filled out. Her face was rounder and the oriental lineage in her eyes was more pronounced. Her lips were also a bit thinner than Nani's.

It wasn't just the girl though, it was him, and his sisters. Ruby had wrapped herself around this woman's leg while Emerald stood on her shoulder, keeping her balance with her tendrils wrapped around the woman's shoulder and waist. Sapphire was the more passive of them. He was content to sit in this woman's arms and stare off into space like he always did. There was still more. It was Stitch and Angel. They stood up next to each other in front of the woman both with their hands clasped behind their backs. Everyone was all smiles and looked like they hadn't a care in the world. Even Sapphire himself had cracked a slight arrogant smirk in the picture, which was a rarity for him,as normally his face was totally deadpan.

It was rare for Sapphire to show emotion. What happened next was more rare. A tear fell down Sapphire's cheek, soaking into his fur. He held the coin in one hand while he reached over with the other to try and grab the image, only to find the image, and his hand, turn to static.

_The place was gigantic. A four story ceiling topped with a gold painted dome stood above a six tiered fountain almost twenty feet high, and that was just the ceramic. On the bottom tier of the fountain was a small aquatic fountain of lilies and native flowers, and assortment of champion Koi who would swim up and try to eat the fingers of children who would stick them inside._

_The floors were all marble, marble of many different colors, carved and fitted into the most extraordinary shapes forming the stylized macaw logo of the Birds of Paradise Hotel in front of the fountain. There were so many people there, walking back and fourth, rich people mostly, as one could tell from all the velure suits. Among the crowd there was even one or two experiments wandering about, though the only one currently that would be recognized was Felix, wandering about, sweeping up any stray dust. It was the experiments that were drawing the crowds, always being photographed and asked for pawprints and such._

_The peaceful scene was soon disturbed by three more experiments, or at least what looked like them, suddenly bursting through the front door and running through the main lobby of the hotel, almost knocking over several guests while they're at it. Ruby ran forward with her head still tuned back, running right into a trash can and knocking it over. As soon as she got up, with a cup of used pudding on her head, ruby immediately found herself the victim of a balloon filled with sticky purple poi. It hit her right in the face and exploded, covering her in what both smelled, and tasted like sweetened library paste._

_After her came the woman in the holographic photo, dressed in plain bluejeans and a black t-shirt, as well as an oversized slingshot and a makeshift bandoleer made of plastic sheeting with balloons stuck to it with scotch tape._

"_Why I am I always the first to get poied," Ruby whined like the little girl she was while hitting her fists against the floor. "huh Lilo?"_

"_Because you pay the least attention to you surroundings!" The woman shouted back as she ran by. _

_Lilo ran passed Ruby, after emerald and Sapphire who both ran deeper into the hotel, both convinced they could loose her. Ruby sighed and rested her chin on one of her hands. In seconds, Felix was there to suck all the poi off of Ruby._

"_Thank's Felix." Ruby said._

_Ruby lifted her head up and stared at Felix with the most peculiar toothy grin and narrowed eyes._

"_Say Felix," Ruby said. "are you busy tonight?"_

"_Ditry?" was all Felix could respond with, that and a head slightly cocked to the side in confusion._

_In another part of the hotel, one that looked far more plain than the grandiose lobby, a swinging door labeled 'Employees Only' was violently crashed into by Emerald and Sapphire. Inside was a rather large room with plain white walls and thin carpet. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, and stacks of paperwork and half eaten snacks brought by the employees covered the buffet table in the center in all places but one. Stitch sat at the only empty spot on the table where he so carefully threaded a twine thin strip of leather through the papyrus sails of a model pirate ship almost as big as he was. He bit down on his tongue while making the tiny movements necessary not to tear the delicate papyrus._

_As soon as something burst through the door Stitch knew what that meant. He threw his whole body over the model pirate ship to protect it from the inevitable stampede that would go through the room. He was immediately hit in the back with two poi balloons. Another splattered against a stack of paperwork, knocking it to the floor and covering it with its horrid stickiness. But at least the model ship was alright._

"_You'll never take me alive Lilo!" Emerald shouted at Lilo from across the room, lifted six feet into the air with her tendrils._

"_Whoa!" she shouted again, as she barely managed to dodge another poi balloon, which hit the filing cabinet behind her._

"_You say that every time!" Lilo shouted back. "Funny how you're not dead yet! And if I were you I'd be more like your brother, he's already long gone."_

"_Where?" Emerald turned her head toward the exit, only to be hit in the back with a poi ballon, knocking her over onto the floor. _

"_Crap!" she yelled out._

"_Ha! Ha!" Lilo shouted, pointing at Emerald, and then she ran out the exit after Sapphire._

_Stitch looked up to see that the chaos had ended, and sat back down and sighed to find his model pirate ship unharmed._

_Dark hardwood floors of a very large bar and grill with an overall fifties Vegas-esque atmosphere of dim lighting, black stained mahogany, and brass trimmings everywhere the eye could see led up to nice circular tables that were all set and empty. The bar wasn't due to open for another hour._

_Angel sat at on top of the bar counter and poured herself a glass of Fresca with a shot of mint chocolate Schnapps and a dab of cream._

_The restaurant style double doors of the bar and grill flung open as Sapphire leapt through the air and landed behind one of the tables, just as a poi balloon flew by, exploding on the table and sending the glasses and napkins crashing down to the floor._

_Sapphire grabbed a chair and held it out in front of him, using it to take the impact of poi balloons as he ran across the room knocking over other chairs._

"_I'm gonna get you eventually Sapphire!" Lilo shouted into the room._

"_I calculate only a seventeen percent chance of that," Sapphire yelled back. "what with amount of cover in this room and my black walnut shield array!"_

_Angel sat on the counter watching the entire climactic moment as cool and nonchalant as a cat. She smirked to herself as she got a cruel idea. She took a sip of her concoction before picking up a plastic coaster engraved with the Bird's of Paradise logo, and tossing it to the ground a small distance away from Sapphire._

_The clacking of the coaster got Sapphire's attention. _

"_Huh?"_

_For a moment, he lowered the chair in front of him and looked to the side to see what made the noise. In that instant a poi balloon hit him right on the side of the face and popped, covering him in a purple mass._

_Angel giggled to herself and winked at Lilo._

"_And did you factor in third party interference?" Lilo asked from across the room with a smile._

_Sapphire was a bit shocked by the suddenness of what had happened. It took him a few seconds to regain his composure. He lifted his arms and looked and the goop dripping from them._

"_No I… Kind of left that part out." Sapphire replied._

"_Come on," Lilo said. "Let's get you washed up."_

_Lilo set her sling shot on a table as she walked up to Sapphire. As soon as she reached him, Sapphire flung his arm out and covered Lilo's face in poi._

"_Hey!" Lilo yelled._

"_Retribution is one of the primary rules of conflict." Sapphire said before Lilo could get in another word._

_For some time the two of them stood there covered in poi. Something in the air snapped, and they both burst out laughing. Sapphire jumped up into Lilo's arms, still snickering under his breath._

"_I guess now we both need a shower." Lilo said._

Sapphire was fully in tears as the memory faded away. Memories it seemed, was all he had now. Unless there was some way to convince Cobra Bubbles to keep the Federation out of this matter, he calculated their odds of success at less than point one percent. That kind of chance isn't even worth trying for, and it didn't seem likely that they were going to be able to convince Cobra Bubbles of cooperating with them. Even if they did divulge their secret, it was unlikely that he would believe them.

So this was it. Sapphire's memories of Lilo, of the hotel, of Stitch and Angel, and of not having to care about anything but the moment now seemed gone forever. Dr. Hansterviel would get his way. He would kill Angel, and with the only barrier to his domination gone, he would destroy the entire planet. And how would he spend his years until then? He would spend it with a family who didn't recognize him as part of it, with a Stitch who hated him, and with Angel long gone.

At the very least Lilo seemed to like him and his sisters, but that was hardly comforting considering the rest of his predicament.

Sapphire snorted down the excess tears in his sinuses, and again reached into the holographic photo to try and touch it. Once again, it turned into static.

"Is something wrong?"

Someone was there standing right above Sapphire. He must've lost track of time. In an instant he twisted the bottom of the glass coin and turned off the hologram. He tossed the coin into his mouth and swallowed it. He snorted the remainder in his tears into his stomach and turned back around to Cobra looming above him.

"No!" Sapphire barked out. "Nothing's wrong."

"If you say so." Cobra answered.

Cobra turned back around and started to walk away. That was a strange response considering the situation. It was a response that Sapphire couldn't understand.

"You're not going to insist on me talking about my problems?" Sapphire said as he got up and ran after Cobra.

Cobra stopped, and didn't turn around as he spoke. "Unlike most people, I know when it's best to just leave someone be.

"The futon is out. Your sisters are already asleep on it. I suggest you check out for the night as well."

Check out for the night?

Sapphire turned around to see that the sun had already set and the sky was dark. Had he really been out there for over an hour? He must've, considering the scenery.

* * *

Something startled Emerald awake. She opened her eyes, but didn't move any other muscle. She thought it was one of her siblings. She turned her head to her left. Sapphire was sleeping totally silent, and totally motionless. That was always how Sapphire slept. Never in his life had he uttered the slightest noise or made the slightest movement in his sleep. It couldn't have been him. 

Emerald turned her head to her left. Ruby was reaching out toward some invisible object in the air while muttering something about almond paste. Was it her? As Emerald began to remember what the sound was that woke her up, she realized it wasn't. It was the distant sound of glass shattering.

Emerald sniffed the air.

They were here!

Emerald sat up and nudged sapphire with one of her tendrils. Sapphire came to fairly easily.

"What is it?" Sapphire asked.

"Smell the air." Emerald said.

Sapphire sat up, closed his eyes and sniffed.

"It's them." Sapphire whispered.

"I'm going to wake up Ruby." Emerald whispered back.

Emerald climbed out of bed and as casually as possible, went to the refrigerator and pulled out an orange soda.

When Sapphire got back she opened the can next to Ruby's ear. Ruby opened her eyes and sat up in a bit of a daze.

"Is it that time already?" she asked.

A small blue hand covered Ruby's mouth and Sapphire shushed into her ear.

"What is it?" Ruby whispered once Sapphire brought his hand back down.

"Clones." Emerald answered.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Story Notes:** Finally! It's been a long time since I last updated this story. This chapter is rather short because it's actually part two of chapter 8. Chapters 8 and 9 were originally supposed to be just one chapter, but the first part ended up being too long.  
I haven't updated in so long because I've kind of lost my zeal for this story. It'll take a few more chapters before it starts getting REALLY good and It's hard to maintain my interest untill then.

**To My Readers:** I would still like more reviewers for my Digimon fanfiction _Digimon Rising_. It's good! Don't ignore it! You can access it from my profile page.

* * *

Only the silence was deeper than the darkness. In silence one can hear so many things one normally couldn't. Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire were aware of the sound of their own breathing, like bellows from a great distance. Water dripped from a faucet somewhere in the house. The soft sizzle of leaves blowing could be heard even through the window. A slight creaking was made every time Emerald or one of her siblings moved a muscle. The refrigerator hummed in the background, sometimes making a slight popping noise inaudible to normal human ears.

The three siblings would never pick up on any of these things normally. Silence had a way of heightening the senses, especially the sense of hearing.

Silence was comforting normally. It gave one the opportunity to relax and to reflect. In this case, silence was anything but comforting. Thoughtless mockeries of their old cousins sat outside somewhere ready to make their move. The originals were now dead, a result of the process that created their counterfeits. Silence was anything but comforting at this moment. Maybe the things outside knew it, or maybe they just didn't realize that they'd been discovered.

Emerald yawned deeply. The yawn was fake. In reality she was breathing through her nose, smelling the air to see just how many of those things were outside, and which ones they were. No use. There was the scent of experiments besides the ones accounted for, but it was so stale that nothing could be told from it, aside from the fact that there were more than two of them. Why was this? Surely these things had been hovering around the apartment since nightfall. Even downwind, staying in one spot that long would give away exactly where and who you were.

The air was stuffy and smelled a bit dirty. It was totally stagnant. Sapphire's eyes shifted rapidly about the room looking for the cause of the air's stillness. The windows in the kitchen and living area were closed. Right between the rooms, the sliding glass door in the dining area was also shut tight. There was no way for air to get in or out, at least not in any appreciable amount.

Emerald and Ruby's gaze followed Sapphire's, eventually landing on the sliding glass door.

"I'm going out to get the scent." Emerald whispered, trying as best she could not to let her lips move. "But I'm really just going out for some fresh air."

Emerald extended her lower pairs of tendril several times the length of her body, lifting herself up and forward off the futon with one, and catching herself from falling on the floor with the other. She lowered herself down and walked over to the sliding glass door.

"Did that make any sense to you?" Ruby asked Sapphire.

Sapphire shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head.

With on tendril from her forehead, Emerald unlocked and opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. There was a small, circular coffee table off to the side of the doorway. After lifting herself up onto it, Emerald leaned forward against the railing and propped herself up against it on her forearms. Her eyes here only half open.

This was a terrible risk she was taking. Emerald was putting herself in an unobstructed view of anyone who may have been watching. Any projectile could hit her at that moment and she wouldn't even be able to tell where it came from. But she was willing to bet that the things out there didn't know she knew they were there. They didn't have common sense anyway. They made their decisions based purely on observation, ignoring the obvious pretenses. If Emerald acted unaware of their presence, she was unaware of their presence, despite the fact that she could obviously smell them. And she could smell them, and so could Ruby and Sapphire.

Ruby and Sapphire were right there at the deck with their heads lifted into the air and inhaling deeply. Sapphire could smell them, but Ruby could smell much more.

"Sparky, Kixx, Zap, and Splodyhead." Ruby whispered out. "Just one of each. They've been here less than two days."

Emerald looked down at her siblings at the side of the coffee table. Ruby was staring at her eagerly. Sapphire stood up on his toes and reached his nose as high into the air as he could, gripping the wooden spokes of the deck to steady himself. Her cover was ruined. That kind of behavior was just too suspicious. If those things didn't know the siblings were aware of them before, they probably did now.

Emerald clenched her eyelids fists together and growled under her breath. She tried hard not to yell at them. She was only seconds away from discovering what Ruby had so overtly blurted out herself. And Sapphire, with his enticed sniffing gave visual proof if Ruby's audio wasn't enough. How could the two of them be so damn ignorant? She told them to keep a semblance of ignorance.

Emerald realized at that moment just what happened. She had almost lost her cool, and thus her air of total confidence. She could never allow that to happen. Emerald took one deep breath and forced herself, rather unpleasantly, to relax.

"Get inside and wake up Cobra." She said. "And don't turn on any lights."

Emerald seemed to both yell and whisper at the same time. Sapphire always listened to that voice. He was never good at handling confrontation. But that was something that would normally make Ruby antagonistic, but even she understood the seriousness of the situation at a fundamental level. They both nodded and dashed into the house on all fours.

Emerald jumped off the table after them.

The doorknob to Cobra Bubble' bedroom creaked and turned. The door opened slowly and stopped at only a quarter of the way open. No light came through. Two small furry heads peaked out from behind the door.

Cobra was still asleep.

The two heads crept further revealing the bodies they carried, one very plain, and the other with four arms, antennae, and spines. Ruby and Sapphire scurried over to the side of Cobra's frameless bed and looked up at him. The bed was made neatly even with him sleeping in it. His body was so flattened and straight he looked like he almost looked like a statue.

Ruby leaned over and put her mouth to Sapphire's ear.

"This guy even sleeps like a plank." She said.

Sapphire just nodded in response.

Cobra's sleep was interrupted by something pressing up against his mouth. There was no fear, planning, or even thought behind what happened next. He instinctively grabbed it and tried to pry it off while digging his nails into its flesh. It was no use. It seemed like the fur-laden arm of a four year old and yet its strength seemed matchless compared to his own.

"Quiet!" something whispered harshly in his ear.

Cobra opened his eyes to see the very dire face of Sapphire staring at him, and the rest of Sapphire standing on his chest on all fours. The hand let go. Cobra glanced up to find Ruby clinging to the wall with five paws while quickly drawing the sixth away from him. She too, was staring right at him.

"What is this?" Cobra asked, surprisingly calmly given the situation.

"We're being watched." Sapphire answered.

"By who?" Cobra asked back.

"Clones!" Ruby said, almost shouting but catching herself at the last moment.

"Of what?"

"Other experiments." Sapphire answered. "They've been following us ever since we got here, I think, now they're about to make their move. We've gotta' leave."

"And what makes you think I'm going to cooperate?"

Sapphire opened his mouth to speak, then paused. He blinked a few times, then closed his mouth and put his hand to his chin.

"When they attack that may be a pretty good motivator."

Ruby, Sapphire and Cobra all turned their head toward the doorway. It was now wide open. Emerald stood in the room overseeing what the scene

Cobra turned his head back to Sapphire and stared. Sapphire stared right back. Sapphire's eyes were wide with anxiety. He gazed deeply into Cobra's eyes as if just to say how serious he was. Cobra was either going to be deeply in relief, or in regret for what he was about to do.

From his only position, Cobra pushed himself up to sitting, pushing Sapphire off of him. He threw off his blanket revealing himself to be wearing no more than green plaid pajama pants and an undershirt. He reached beneath his pillow and pulled something out. Sapphire raised an eyebrow as he saw what it was. Emerald almost gasped, but stopped herself just before.

Cobra unlatched the safety of his pistol and cocked the slide. It was already loaded.

"That's a gun." Emerald whispered.

".45 HK USP expert with a ceramic bore." Cobra replied with a kind of speed that made it seem as if he had planned it in advance.

"Do you always keep a loaded gun under your pillow?" Sapphire asked.

"Yes." Cobra answered.

"Are those bullets armor piercing?" Emerald asked.

"Solid tungsten, nitro propelled."

The door opened to the second hallway leading to the living room. Emerald and Ruby inched their way out. Despite their best efforts, the floor still creaked at their footsteps. Cobra followed them, equally slowly. He nudged the door shut with his foot, making only the lightest clicking sound. Sapphire clung to Cobra. His arms wrapped around Cobra's neck while he barely peaked out from behind his shoulder.

Cobra had both hands on his gun. He held it up, close to his face as he stepped in synch with Emerald and Ruby walking forward into the living room.

"There's nothing here." Cobra whispered.

"Yes there is." Emerald whispered back. "I can smell them."

Ruby walked forward just a bit too casually, sniffing the air and not looking where she was going. She stopped.

"I think they're gone." Ruby said. "The smell's fading.

A blinding yellow flash of light suddenly filled the room as the wall just to the left of the couch exploded from the inside. A crack of thunder was heard, deafening as if from only feet away. An arcing light flew by barely fast enough to register with the eyes, colliding with Ruby and sending her flying toward, and then through the left wall.

Sapphire shrieked and fell off of Cobra onto his back from jumping reflexively.

Cobra unleashed a volley of bullets at the arcing light. By the time he got off the first shot, it was too late, the light was gone.

"What the hell was that!" Cobra yelled at Emerald.

"Zap, experiment six-o-three," Emerald yelled back without turning her head. "or his clone anyway."

The instant Emerald was done shouting, another great bursting sound was sent through the apartment, like a pile of wood being smashed. Emerald yelped and spun around at the sound. Cobra spun around and pointed his gun straight at the door to the apartment. In a flash, a huge bulbous thing swung around, knocking the gun out of Cobra's hand and beneath the couch. Cobra barely had time to clutch his hand when some massive, gray, four armed, neckless mass through its whole body at him, taking him to the ground instantly.

The Kixx clone wrapped two arms around Cobra's one in opposite directions, rendering him unable to move. As the Kixx clone started to drag Cobra screaming across the floor, four long green vines wrapped themselves around the clone's four wrists, pulling outward as hard as they could.

Cobra was immediately released and pushed him up to stand. He clutched at his arm, which hung limply in front of him, while looking at the clone. It tried to struggle, pulling its arms inward, but the strength of Emerald's tendrils was too great for it to overcome.

"Who sent you!" Cobra shouted at the clone.

The clone stopped struggling and looked up at Cobra. It smiled and breathed deeply, closing its eyes. The clone ignited, its whole body burst into flames. Emerald unwrapped her tendrils from its wrists and let it fall face first to the ground and burn to ashes.

"Scouts?" Emerald whispered to herself. "They're just scouts?"

"What does that mean?" Cobra asked.

"No time to explain, there's still more of them out there."

Three flashes of light were seen in the distance. Less than a second later, three globs of glowing red goop flew through the sliding glass door, melting their way through it rather than shattering the glass. The balls hit the table, smashing it into charred bits, The range, reducing that to a melted hole in the wall, and one grazed by Emerald's ear, singing the tip.

Emerald yelped, clutching her ear with one hand, she propelled herself through the air on her tendrils in front of the couch. Cobra dived forward landing in front of the couch jest ahead of Emerald, who tensed and gnarred at the flying body so close to her.

More red globs flew through the sliding glass door, leaving blackened holes in the floor and walls on impact.

"Which one is that?" Cobra yelled over the sound of the firing.

"Six nineteen!" Emerald yelled back. "Splodyhead!"

Cobra eyed beneath the couch as the kitchen and dining area continued to be bombarded by plasma fire. There was nothing there.

"My gun!" Cobra yelled. "What happened to my gun?"

A shot and shattering glass was heard, causing both Cobra to recoil in shock. Cobra and Emerald lifted up their heads to look over the couch. Sapphire was standing up on the couch using the backboard for cover while he fired Cobra's gun out the window toward SplodyHead balanced atop a distant street light.

"Sapphire what are you doing!" Emerald and Cobra shouted out at the same time.

Sapphire paid no attention to their screams and continued shooting, while the plasma globs changed their course toward the living room, melting through the same window Sapphire shot through and blowing up tables and appliances, and blowing holes through the walls.

"You're drawing his fire right toward us!" Emerald screamed.

"There's only one bullet left make it count!" Cobra screamed as well.

Sapphire took the suggestion. He ducked behind the backboard until the firing from outside died down and then jumped back up with Cobra's pistol poised at the distant lamp post. Sapphire took several seconds to aim, standing perfectly still while globs of plama flew all around him, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet flew through the air and flew right into the muzzle of the clone, which flew off the lamp post and exploded into flames in mid air.

Cobra and Emerald stood up and both gave Sapphire menacing looks. Sapphire sat down on the couch breathing hard. When he opened his eyes he saw the two figures glaring at him. His ears drooped down and he swallowed. He held the gun out in front of him.

"Here's your gun." He whimpered with a weak grin.

Cobra swiped the pistol from Sapphire's hand and threw it hard on the floor.

"How many more are there?" Cobra barked out.

"One." Sapphire answered. "Not including Zap."

"Hey!" Emerald spoke out, turning her head every which way. "Where's ruby?"

The blinding yellow flash and deafenting crack of thunder returned as the backboard of the couch erupted forward, sending Sapphire headfirst into the adjacent wall. Sapphire body stuck itself inside the wall with only its legs hanging out the other end. The arcing ray of light flew through the living room with a bright red blur wrapped around its tail end. It made a sharp upward turn and crashed though the roof, sending bits of wood, sheetrock, and lots of dust falling down on top of Cobra, Emerald, and Sapphire, now pressed flat against the floor.

"Ruby!" Emerald Screamed.

"Water!" Sapphire shouted.

"What?" Cobra shouted back.

"Zap can transform into a hypersonic, organic tube encased in a four hundred megawatt laser."

"What?" Cobra shouted again.

The bedroom door shattered and the arcing ray of light few straight forward through the hallway, through the living room, and through the wall between the couch and sliding glass door. More debris was sent falling onto the bodies flattened against the floor.

"The laser maintains its shape by circling around Zap." Sapphire continued. "Water will cause it to refract inward!"

"The emergency sprinkler system!" Cobra yelled out.

Emerald turned her head sideways and glanced up at the ceiling. There was one sprinkler head sticking out. A charred and smoldering piece of wood lay on the floor where the dining table used to be. Emerald reached a tendril across the room, wrapped it around the piece of wood, and lifted it up into the air. She shoved the smoldering wood into a sprinkler head. A second later, alarms went off and water poured through sprinkler heads throughout the apartment. It soaked through the fur of Emerald and Sapphire, and through the clothes of Cobra, giving an unpleasant cold and runny sinuses.

"Now we wait!" Emerald yelled.

A few seconds later, the arcing ray of light crashed in through the ceiling. As soon as it was inside the living room, the entire apartment was engulfed in an incredible white light, and then a torturous screeching like metal sawing through metal.

When the light and the noise faded away, Ruby was on her back, on the floor and nearly unconscious. Her arms lay out to her sides and her tongue hung out her gaping mouth. Ruby's paws and chest were blackened by the burns of clinging to Zap.

"Ruby!" Emerald shouted.

Emerald ran up to ruby and lifted her up in her tendrils to a semi sitting position, looking deeply, and worriedly into her face.

"Sparky's still out there." Sapphire said.

"Not for long." Cobra replied.

Cobra was standing up, looking out the window behind the couch. Emerald and Sapphire climbed atop the couch backboard to see.

The dull gray Sparky was standing motionless on the roof of a distant house. It stared at the figures in the window of the wrecked apartment. They stared right back.

The sprinkler stopped pouring out water and alarm sounded off. The quiet was erie now compared to the previous clamor. Dripping water was the only sound now. There was so much of it that all the subtler sounds were masked.

Sapphire snorted from his runny nose induced by the cold water.

The gray Sparky stared out from the distance only a few seconds longer before glowing and then flying outward, westward and away from Kokaua.

"Now he knows we're here." Sapphire whispered to herself.

"Who does?" Cobra asked ominously.

Emerald lifted her head up from the barely conscious face of Ruby toward Cobra. Cobra turned around to look at Emerald. Cobra began walking toward Emerald, standing as tall as he could with his fists clenched and his lips pursed.

"I can't tell you." Emerald said, shaking her head. "Everything depends on that. The whole world depends on that."

Cobra stood above Emerald, huddling over Ruby and staring back up at him, and folded his arms.

"If I tell you what they are, that may destroy everything both you and I know." Emerald Pleaded.

"I that case." Cobra answered, water dripping from his chin and elbows. "I'll have to tell the Federation that they came here because of you. And I doubt very much that they'll have any mercy for you after hearing that report."

"No!" Emerald begged, shaking her head. "You'll damn the whole world! The whole Federation!"

"Then tell me what they were and where they came from."

"Tell him." Sapphire said from across the room. "By now I've calculated our odds of success as better if he did know than if he didn't."

"How much?" Emerald asked.

"Everything." Sapphire answered.

Emerald sighed and looked back down at Ruby, groaning, delirious, and mumbling something totally incoherent.

"Those were clones of experiments two two one, six-o-one, six-o-three, and six one nine." Emerald said softly. "They came here to scout out any possible obstacles to their master's efforts. They burned themselves to avoid capture."

"And just who is their master?" Cobra asked.

Emerald took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"Dr. Hamsterviel." She answered.

"Impossible." Cobra replied. "Someone in prison can't have those kinds of resources."

"Not now he doesn't." Emerald answered. "But in twenty years, he'll have."

"In twenty years?"

"Among Jumba's inventions was a way to travel through time. Hamsterviel used Jumba's formulas to build a time machine of his own, which he used to go back and kill experiment six two four."

"Angel?"

Emerald nodded her head.

"Why her." Cobra asked.

"Because he escaped once before. It was indirectly because of Angel that he was recaptured and his hostile takeover of the federation stopped.

"He needed to come back, twenty years into the past to kill Angel so that he wouldn't have anyone to stop him. To that effect… after capturing as many experiments as possible to be put through his cloning process, he wiped out every living thing on Earth.

"Jumba sent us back to stop him. That's why the Jumba now doesn't recognize us. In this time we haven't even been born yet."

"You mean designed." Cobra replied.

Emerald's heart skipped a beat. What did she just mutter out?

"Yes!" Emerald snapped right back. "Designed! I meant designed.

"This is a farfetched story." Cobra said. "If Jumba says its probable, then I'll believe you, but until then…"

"What about the Federation?" Sapphire shouted out.

"I'll leave a note for my comrades telling them not to get themselves or the Federation involved."

"Are you sure they'll listen to it?" Emerald asked.

Cobra looked around the apartment. What wasn't burned or broken was soaking wet. All the windows were shattered. All the appliances were in pieces scattered about. Spent bullet casing littered the floor along with debris from the roof now barely able to hold itself up.

"Yes." Cobra answered. "They'll listen."


	10. Chapter Ten

**Author Notes:** Finally! I've updated something. The past few weeks have been nothing but work with finals and helping my family with Christmas stuff. But now I've got some time off and I'm ready to update! Expect another update of _I Was Beautiful Once_ tomorrow.

**To My Readers:** I want to ask you a question, and I want you all to be brutally honest. Is this story too remeniscient of The Terminator? If you think so, I want to know it!

* * *

Stitch lay sprawled out on his back in the baby carrier of a shopping cart being slowly wheeled through the small grocery store on the edge of Kokaua. One hand rested behind his head, and the other on his chest. He breathed deeply and slowly and looked at the ceiling. He traced drawings in his mind through the holes drilled in the panels and tried to discern the patterns of how the lights flickered. Laying on metal wire wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but that didn't seem to matter at the moment.

It was just a relief to get those three things out of his house. It's funny that you never realize just how stressed you are until you feel better. The constant talking and moving to and fro and competing for attention and being so crowded was a force of tension. Even for only two days. It felt good now to Stitch to allow his thoughts to focus only on the moment. Breathing seemed easier and smoother than yesterday. His shoulders were limp, something that was impossible earlier.

A soft pud alerted Stitch that Nani had just dropped a new bottle of aspirin into the shopping cart. Stitch lifted himself into sitting. If he remembered correctly, paper towels were very close to one of the things he came for. He scanned the shelves. They were right there.

"Ih! Ih! Ih!" Stitch grunted, pointing to a small bottle of pure aloe extract

Nani looked at the bag, and then back at Stitch with a raised eyebrow.

"What do you want those for?" She asked.

Stitch twiddled his fingers and looked away from Nani's face. She couldn't know.

"Stuff…" Stitch answered.

Nani looked at Stitch for a few more seconds, and then at the bag of cotton balls. She shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, they're only two bucks so I guess."

Stitch sighed and fell back down onto the wires. That was only one of a few things he wanted to get. None of them were very expensive, but all of them would be very much appreciated.

It was a quick journey through the rest of the store. Stitch had managed to swipe a chocolate bar, an extra carton of Pass-O-Guava, some eyedrops, an extra jar of peanut butter, and a bottle of sleeping pills.

* * *

The horridness. Some senses were invaded with foul input, while others were left blank. Nothing could be seen except black. Nothing could be felt except cold, hard, and the aching of being confined for so long on the brink of starvation. Nostrils were invaded with a dozen noxious odors. So old they were that long ago they ceased being distinct. Now they all melded into a single hybrid smell resembling something like months old vomit. The body felt like vomit. It was soaked in things that defied explanation, causing fur to stick and seeping into pores to cause untold itching and burning. They body lye in the middle of the floor in the fetal position, as it did most often.

Even so, it was better than was before. Nails were trimmed and no longer dug into their hands. The face and hands were mostly clean, and those were the most important parts anyway. But most important of all, sleep was now possible. What with the miracle of substances, the little creature could now dream just long enough to keep its sanity. Though the dreams were anything but pleasant, they were necessary, and the creature wasn't about to give up on them, lest it loose its mind while awake.

The little bottle was just about out now. There was only enough in each one for a dozen handfuls of those miracle pills, and the last handful had been taken up just half an hour earlier. Shivering gave way to relaxation. Relaxation gave way to a mind dulling drunken feeling. That finally gave way to sleep.

She was drowning. The water was ice cold. She struggled, flailing her arms to reach some speck of light in the distance, but she couldn't. She could struggle enough to keep from sinking, but she didn't have the strength to swim back up the surface. She stayed there, staring at that tiny speck of light in the distance above her, above the surface of the water. She knew she could never reach it, but staying put was at least better than sinking. The water was bottomless. If she began to sink, she would keep sinking forever.

It was so dark that the tiny speck of light in the distance was all that could be seen. She couldn't even her hand in front of her face. It was so cold that she had long since gone numb. She struggled flapping a body she couldn't even feel. She held her breath, so feint that she knew that at any moment she would pass out. Then she would start sinking. But as long as she struggled she retained consciousness, however distorted it may be.

Why did she keep struggling? There was something waiting for her in that tiny speck of light just above the surface of the water. It was something she only vaguely remembered. It was something she at first held no concern for. Even as it grew on her, and she began to care for it, she still held it in very low esteem. Such a thing was not the ideal object to be struggling to reach. But somehow she knew that if she did reach it she would be safe from sinking. It would keep her afloat on the surface. Why was this? She did not know. Certainly for what she once thought of it she was not deserving of its protection.

A loud clang split her brain in half. She put her hands over her ears trying to stop the pain and the bleeding, and then…

She jumped from the solid floor and breathed air. It was ice cold air filled with that same horrid smell. But at least she wasn't underwater. Instantly she started shivering again. That made her feel a little warmer. Everything about her life now was designed to keep her teetering on the edge of dissolution without actually falling over. She was almost starved. She was almost mad. She was almost broken. Almost. The circumstances forced on her never allowed her to begin the process of healing, but nor did it allow her to take the one final step into oblivion. She was being forcefully strapped down and held within the state of almost.

Her thoughts wandered to the dream. It was the same dream every time. Although every time she woke up, she could hardly remember what it was. Something about panic, smothering, and trying to reach salvation in the distance. She tried to remember what that salvation might have been. It was no use. Even in the dream itself she didn't know what it was, only that it was there. It was probably better that she couldn't remember though.

But what woke her up? It was a loud clanging noise. Something glowed a dull red in the distance. It came closer. It was a metal sphere of some kind, with a red light shining down on her. She squinted. The light hurt her eyes, even though it was such a dull light. It stopped a short distance away. She remembered why. She was confined in a small glass cell. If it went any further it would run into the wall.

A voice came out of the metal sphere, high pitched and whiney with a ghastly yet somehow laughable accent. It was a most annoying voice. She bit down on her lower lip as it spoke.

"Experiment 624. It is time for your therapy."

Sounds of turning latches echoed through the cell. There were dozens of them, and each came from a different direction. The glass started rising out of the floor. Now she was free to make a run for it if she wanted to. But she couldn't. She was too weak to resist, and even if she wasn't she would be caught anyway, and put through her therapy.

Her therapy. She knew exactly what was coming.

* * *

She was alone in a small dome. Only a hard metal chair kept her company, a chair she was strapped to by metal wires. She would struggle. But she knew it would only cause cuts in her skin. And with whatever filth she was drenched in, those cuts would not heal.

That same caustic voice boomed through the dome, causing pain in her ears and her head.

"You could have everything 624. You could have anything you want. All you must do is give in to my every whim and desire and all the galaxy could be yours. Yet you hold back. Let me show you what you are missing. Let me show you what you could have if you make yourself mine."

The walls of the dome lit up pure white. Pain of the eyes was intense, but it didn't last long. The brightness soon became a source of relief and comfort.

A syringe attached to a wire snaked its way up the chair. She couldn't see it, unable to move her head, but she could feel it moving against her leg, and then her side, finally reaching her neck where it jabbed inside her. She was afraid of it. She was afraid of what it did to her, even though once it took effect she would love it.

Her body was filled with warmth. In an instant, all sensations of fear, shame, and compassion disappeared. It didn't matter that she was a helpless captive because she could not feel fear. It didn't matter she was being asked to hurt others for she could not feel compassion. It didn't matter what she was going to be put through for she could not feel shame. What was left was only desire. She felt only pure, selfish desire at the expense of all others. It was euphoric.

Three dimensional images flashed across the dome, and her chair slowly rotated to get the fullest view of the scene. She was in an infinite expanse of flat ground. It was plain gray. But all around her as far as distance could go, lye dead bodies of every conceivable species. Every shape, size and color was there. There was no blood, no sings of injury, but they were all clearly dead. She had not the slightest care about what she saw, save for a hint of childlike curiosity.

"These are the bodies of those who would dare act against you." The voice spoke out. "They met their fate at your hands. A fate they all deserved, for no one has the right to question you. No one has any rights. Rights do not exist. There are only privileges, privileges dispensed solely by you."

The insolent bastards! How dare they! They are not even people. There is one person and she is her. All others are nothing more than things. How dare they think they deserve to be anything more than inanimate property. The voice was wrong. They didn't deserve to die, at least not so cleanly. They deserved much worse. They deserved to be tortured, mutilated, and for the land to be painted with their blood. They deserved this solely on their audacity. Audacity is a crime unforgivable.

The images projected from the walls of the dome flickered and suddenly she found herself somewhere else.

She was in a street. She was in an extraordinarily wide street with building reaching up to the sky all around her. Banners waved throughout the sky with her face on it. A parade marched toward her. Patriotic music filled the air. They were all short stubby lizard men, the ones with thick tails almost all of whom end up joining the military out of sheer instinct. They marched in skin tight pink garbs and pink masks, thus garunteeing their anonymity. They too waved banners featuring her face. Everything was the same. Everything was synchornous and symmetrical. Nothing was there to tell anything apart from anything else, except her. She was the center of the universe.

"These are your followers." The voice blasted out again. "They are your legion. They are unfeeling, unthinking, mindless, soulless automatons, and they serve only you."

Yes! They all marched passed her. They were all hers. They were her slaves. All of society was her slave, and that was how it should be. Waves of heat traveled up and down her spine as she thought about owning such a civilization. Absolute power was hers. She was god. And that's how it should be.

The images flickered again, and now she was in a round bed covered with silky pink fabric. The bed was larger than most rooms, and curtains of blue fabric draped over the sides of the bed, blocking the view of the outside.

"And this," the voice spoke. "This is what you can come home to every night."

Silhouettes rose up from the sides of the curtains. The curtains parted, and they all started crawling toward her. There had to be a dozen of them. They all looked like her. They had the same body, the same two arms, the same long, draping, bulb ended antennae, the same ears, the same eyes, the same everything. But they were all fairly larger than her. They were masculine, and they held such different colors. Some were black, some dark blue, some blood red.

Another syringe attached to a wire slithered its way up her side and jabbed itself into her neck. This drug was different from the last, and having no fear, she looked forward to it. The drug gave her a bizarre form of synesthesia. Everything she could see, she could also feel. The cloth felt so incredibly silky smooth against her. It was divine.

The others were upon her. Their lips pressed against her body. Their hands ran through her fur. There was no fear. She could not be harmed. There was no compassion. They existed only to serve her. There was no shame. She could do no wrong, and nothing wrong could ever come from anything she does.

What was left was pure, selfish desire at the expense of all others. None of them had an identity. They were not people. They were not even alive as far as she was concerned. They were not her harem of lovers, they were her tools, plain and simple. They were play things for her to quench her own lust with.

Her heart raced and her mind filled with thoughts of joyous greed and arrogance. So many hands touching her everywhere, in places she wouldn't even think about in most circumstances. They drove her wild with vanity and conceit.

And then it was all over. The images flickered one last time and then all turned to black. Torn away from the height of her power trip. She was furious. She snarled and barked and snapped out at nothing in rage. She wasn't even aware of the cuts she was making on her body, or how they would stay there for as long as she was kept in her current condition.

"It could all be yours." The voice said one last time. "But you simply hold back."

She struggled harder. She wanted everything she saw. She wanted to see everyone who questioned her authority dead. She wanted her own empire of a blindly loyal populace. She wanted a hundred anonymous thralls to tend to her every sexual wit and whim. If she had to give herself over to a strange screechy voice to get them, than so be it. It would be a small price to pay. But a sickly sweet smell invaded her nostrils, and she passed out.

* * *

Cold, hard, metal floor, the hybrid stink of months old vomit, the aching, the hunger, it all came pouring back into her body as she lifted herself off the floor with her front paws. What just happened? She was taken away. She was taken some place she liked and wanted to go back to.

Lucidity crept back into her brain. Soon all became clear. She could remember everything. She had always been greedy. She had always been lustful. But that was too much. There was a line between shrewd and just plain sadistic. She not only crossed that line, she left it in the dust.

She screamed in horror at what she had thought and done last time she was awake. How could she possible think those thoughts? How could she possibly consider those actions? Her throat cracked and she hacked up something black from screaming so hard. It tasted like sweetened rust.

She shivered, not from cold, but from fear that somewhere inside her was that thing she became while under those drugs. She shivered in fear that one day she wouldn't have anything left within herself to fight it. The feeling left her nauseated, and her bowels turned into jelly. She would've lost it all if it weren't for the fact that she had no nourishment in her gut.

She collapsed back onto the floor, shaking and whimpering. But something happened that would give her strength. Not much, but just enough to keep on going.

A flash of light and a whirring sound invaded her cell.

She squinted and looked over to where it came from. The tiny light on the floor was being covered up.

She crawled over to it, not knowing what it was. She felt it. It was a green burlap backpack. Something about it was vaguely familiar, but she couldn't tell what. What was it about this bag that was so jostling through her mind? And why did she feel the need to covet whatever was inside. It wasn't the kind of coveting she felt in the dome, but rather she wanted it because it represented something of comfort. It was a feeling she had long since thought not to exist, yet here a voice somewhere said it could be found within this bag.

She unbuttoned it and carelessly dumped its contents out onto the floor. There were so many things inside, and a certain smell she recognized, but didn't know from where.

There was something round, flat, and soft. She picked it up. It was clean, another sensation she had forgotten. It was soft, so much unlike the floor. It was warm, she wrapped her arms around it and held it against her body as if it were a savior of sorts. It was some kind of cushioned sack. Possibly used to help for sleeping. Though it was too small to sleep on, she could easily rest her head against it.

There was a cardboard carton. She recognized what it was on sight. She picked it up and bit down on it. It was different from the last one, sweeter and less citrusey, but it was just as good flowing down her throat. There was the familiar candy bar which came with all of these deliveries, as well as a jar of something that smelled toasty, salty, and fatty, and made her mouth water. But no, those would be saved for later.

Now she knew what this thing was. It came every so often bearing gifts of simple comfort. But who sent it? That was still beyond her.

A small bottle of something clear touched her foot. She picked it up and smelled it. Whatever was inside smelled floral, but not edible? She opened the bottle and squeezed some onto her paw to inspect it closer. In seconds, the burning and chapped itching of her paw felt better. It was now moist, and carried the same floral scent. She squeezed more onto her cracked paws, feet, and nose. The corrosive burning was gone from the bare patches of skin, replaced by a pleasant moist sensation.

Another bottle was on the other side of the floor light. More of those miracle pills allowing her to get a half decent sleep in the pain she was in.

But what caught her eye was a plain envelope in the center of the floor light. It was the most familiar object of all, but she did not know why. Perhaps it held the clues as to who sends these things and why.

She picked up the envelope and as if by instinct opened it with her clawand pulled out the letter inside. It was in Tantalog.

_My boojibu.  
Everything he does to you, everything he puts you through, It's as painful to me as I'm sure it must be to you. I know because everything that happens to you I can smell. I can smell it in your fur. I can smell it in your blood. I can smell it in your tears.  
I don't have words to describe the nightmarish stench surrounding you. But I don't need to describe it, as you know it all too well.  
I want to save you so bad. I'm so sorry I can't, but if I tried we would both be put to death. There are too many who depend on me, and I depend on you.  
I promise I will find some way to bring you back. I still don't know how I could do this, but so help me god it will be done.  
Your boojibu  
Stitch_

Stitch. It was someone named Stitch. She racked her brains in search of the name Stitch. She couldn't place her finger on it, but from the sound of things it seemed as if this Stitch was in love with her.

She racked her brains more, and suddenly it came to her.

Stitch was one of the others like her. She knew him for a very short time, but during the while she had him wrapped around her finger like a piece of string. Though she cared nothing of him at first, he grew on her. Eventually she saw him as something of a beloved pet. Beloved he was, though a pet nonetheless. That was why she saved him.

If she thought so lowly of him, why was he bearing himself to her now? Perhaps she had convinced him otherwise of the truth.

Whatever her feelings for him then were, they were now much different. It was this Stitch creature that promised her salvation. Salvation from where she was and what was being done to her was worth anything, even love, even benevolence.

* * *

It was late evening. The sun had set but the sky was not yet dark. There was a ring on the doorbell of the David Kawena's apartment.

Stitch and Lilo were both inside, both on the couch, and both watching some corny game show on TV. They didn't react to the ringing. Neither of them wanted to get up.

The bell sounded again.

"Stitch! Lilo! Somebody answer the door!" came Nani's voice from across the house and through a wall.

Stitch sighed. He got up and walked to the door. He had to hop to reach the doorknob but he unlatched the stopper and the door flew open.

There stood Cobra Bubbles and three pests standing right behind him.

"Gaba?" Stitch muttered under his breath.

"What's this?" Came another voice from across the hall.

David Kawena stood at the end of the hall with a beer in one hand.

"You to come with us." Cobra growled. "You're all in great danger."


	11. Chapter Eleven

Nani paced back and fourth barefoot on the shag carpet of David's apartment. It was one in the morning and no one had time to dress in anything but pajamas. She walked around looking down with her hand on her forehead. On the couch Lilo and Stitch's eyes followed her movements while David's eyes followed her from the hallway. Jumba was the only one in the room who didn't seem unsure of himself.Pleakly on the other hand simply looked confused. Cobra stood arms folded in front of the door while Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire nervously awaited Nani's response to their highly improbably story.

Nani stopped in the middle of pacing and glanced over toward the three would be experiments staring at her with a combination of affection and fear, which they were probably doing on purpose. Sapphire's twiddling of his fingers was especially noticeable.

"It's not going to work so you might as well stop." Nani whispered aloud, shaking her head slightly."

The siblings lowered their head and scowled to themselves. Sapphire stopped twiddling his fingers. Nani paced back and forth again. It was impossible to tell how long this went on for. The silence made the Emerald grit her teeth and the back of her neck feel wet.

Nani stopped again and huffed to herself. Her hand slid down her face until it reached her lip, where she bit it softly. What the hell they told her couldn't possibly be true. At least that's what common sense said. But common sense often had to take the back seat what with everything she went through since that one day three years ago when she took Lilo to the pound to get a new dog. Aliens? Genetic experiments? Mad scientists? Some of the things those experiments were capable of doing defied all logic and rationality. Given everything she'd seen up until this point, was their story really so farfetched. Half of her believed it was. The other half didn't.

What was it Nani was going to say? All three of the would be experiments wondered. Everything rested on her. Their future in hinged on whether or not someone known for being suspicious would trust total strangers with an outlandish tale. The affection on their faces previously may have just been a lure, but the fear was genuine. Nani had warmed up to them somewhat from their first meeting. At the very least she wasn't actively hostile toward them any more. That alone meant there was a chance that she would agree to let them do what had to be done. The fear persisted though. Only one knew just how slim a chance it was, but all three knew it was a slim chance.

What id what they said was true. It certainly caused mixed feelings from the one who'd been there since the beginning. He ended up here on this backwater section of this backwater planet on accident three years ago. He was taken in by people ho had compassion, a feeling alien to him at the time. This was his family, not theirs. This was his home and his love, not theirs. But compassion was a lesson, not a gift. It wasn't something that could simply be received without being returned. This alone caused him many mixed feelings. He wanted them out of his way, out of his life. But if what they said was true, they would eventually be part of his family, part of his love. He was unsure of what to think or feel about them. All he could do at the moment was stare blankly into space.

It was a rare thing that someone would become intimately familiar with the inner workings of the mind of a psychopath. Rarer still was that this person would be a child. This little girl was one of the few examples. Not many others like her could handle such a thing, but she understood allot more than most children her age. That much was proven every time she went to school. She never imagined that this psychopath could gain the upper hand against her and her most bizarre family. But these beings said otherwise. He gained such an upper hand that it seemed time travel was the only way to beat him. But all that effort could be squashed with just a word from Nani. She exchanged a fearful glance with the three sibling experiments from across the room.

Nani dropped her hand down to her waist and stared them as hard as she could, trying to find some sign of dishonesty in their gazes. There was none.

"So let me repeat all that back just to make sure I got it all." Nani said. "You three are from the future, where you're all just another part of our family. That is until Dr. Hamsterveil stole Jumba's math whatevers to make his own time machine and change the past allowing him to rule. So future Jumba sent you three back to stop that from happening."

"That's right." Sapphire nodded, whispering.

Nani shook her head and waved her hand in front of her face. She brought it close and bit on her fingers again.

"Is this even possible Jumba?"

"Is being very possible." Jumba answered. "Referred to theorems have already been completed and tested successfully."

"So it is possible." Lilo exclaimed. "They really can be from the future."

"But is it true?" Cobra added.

"Well how do we know you aren't the ones Hamsterveil used to take over the future in the first place?" Pleakly interrupted, waving his finger at them from across the room. "Huh? How do we know!"

"Ih!" Stitch shouted in agreement, folding his arms and nodding his head. "How do we know?"

"Well…" David Spoke up. "Why don't you tell each of us something Hamsterveil couldn't know."

"We could tell you allot of things like that." Emerald answered.

"We're all listening." Nani said softly.

Ruby stepped up first. She cleared her throat and spun around on one foot.

"There your real name." she said, pointing to Cobra. "It's Sa-"

"I'd prefer you'd not say it out loud." Cobra interrupted.

Cobra kneeled over and motioned to his ear. Ruby blinked and turned her head before waddling up to him and whispering into it. Cobra stood up again with a rather discontented look on his face.

"She is correct." Cobra whispered.

"So what's next?" Lilo asked.

The siblings stood in place for a few seconds, looking at each other, looking at the others in the room, rubbing their chins all at different ties. It was Sapphire who finally raised his head and snapped his fingers.

"I know what really happened to your ex-wife Jumba." He said.

"Really?" Jumba asked, putting his hands on his hips.

"Really." Sapphire answered, putting his hands on his own. "Do you remember that de-evolution experiment you were always so fond of?"

"That is being enough!" Jumba shouted all at once.

He rocketed over to sapphire, almost slipping over the floor before putting one hand over Sapphire's mouth and the other on his head.

"I am reminded and convince-ed. You are speaking truth. Now let us be moving on."

Lilo and Stitch turned to look at each other with curious eyes. Nani and David in turn looked at each other just as curiously.

"Tell me something about me and then I'll convinced." Nani spoke up.

Sapphire pushed Jumba's hands off of him and went and clasped his own hands together under his chin, tapping his finger on his knuckles. Nani was the most important one of all in this. If they couldn't think of something than this would all be over then and there. Sapphire shook his head with his eyes closed searching for something he knew about Nani that no one else could. It was no use, everything he knew about her he could've gotten from somewhere else. At least everything that came to mind right now.

Sapphire's mind wandered into the probabilities of their success in this mission and the statistics of what kind of opposition they might be facing in the near future. He couldn't think about Nani's secrets anymore, it was just something he wasn't good at. It was up to Emerald then, Ruby was too naïve to come with something that good all on her own.

But the last thing he expected happened. Ruby stepped up and cleared her throat in front of the group. Everyone stared at her. It made her spine itch. She never liked being stared at, and stage fright had always been one of her weaknesses. But even she knew how important this was. Even she could comprehend what it must be like to never see her family again.

"Nani?" Ruby Whispered. "Do you remember, when Lilo was only five years old and you were arguing with your parents about how they should give her a little more discipline?"

Lilo looked over at Nani a bit confused. Nani's arms relaxed and dropped while her face took on one of disbelief.

"It got so bad that they said they wouldn't be there at your big tryout as a hula girl at Niko's Weekend Luau?"

Nani shook her head slowly. This was something no one was supposed to know about. She took a step backward and her eyes just barely started to water. Lilo climbed up on the arm of the couch with a look of wonder pressed right at Nani.

"That job would've paid me three times as much as I was getting as a waitress." Nani whispered.

"That's right." Ruby shook her head. "And your parents weren't there, just like they said, or at least you couldn't see them. More than that, you didn't get the job. But that night your dad called you and told you they were there, just hiding. They said you did better than any of the others. They said you should've gotten it. That was just a week before the accident."

Nani turned and leaned her head, almost hitting it, on the post of the doorway she stood in. How could she know that? Nobody knew that, nobody except herself. A strange feeling washed over Nani as she heard that, not quite sadness, not quite shock. It was something too strong for her to keep a straight face but not strong enough to make her cry. Nani let her head drop from the post. She slowly turned it back around and up to ruby.

The little red ball of fluff stared at her with a genuinely worried and caring eyes. Just from the past few days, Nani knew Ruby was too expressive to be able to fake that look. It wasn't something you ever gave a stranger. If it was genuine, it could only come from knowing someone for years and years.

Stitch saw it as well. That was the instant he realized beyond a reasonable doubt that everything they said was true. In the distant future all three of them would be part of his family. The freeloaders, the thieves of his best friend and of his privacy, they would be part of his life eventually. Anger came but couldn't get a firm hold over him. Instead Stitch was filled with fear. What they said was true. After so long, he would have to live the rest of his life with them. That wasn't something he thought he would be able to handle.

"It turned out," Nani finished. "the one who got the job was sleeping with the owner. All right you can stay."

That was it. That was too much for Stitch to take. They would be staying. The freeloaders, the thieves of his family and privacy were now welcomed guests. Stitch had amazed even himself by keeping cool for this long, but now was too much for him.

"Ahhhggg!" Stitch screamed, pressing his hand to his ears and shaking his head. "Naga! Naga! Naga!"

Everyone's attention was now on Stitch. Everything he never wanted now came true. Those creatures who only look like experiments were going to be a designated part of his life from now on. He could only imagine it. When he wanted to be with Lilo, she would follow them everywhere. When he wanted to be alone, they would insist on harassing him. When he wanted to sulk in isolation over a relationship that ended before it could begin, they would be there constantly badgering him over every minute detail, trying to console him during the one time he didn't want to be.

Maybe they would be part of his life in the distant future, and maybe then he would accept them as such. But this was his time. This was Stitch's time! It wasn't there time.

Stitch pressed his eyelids together so hard they teared on reflex.

"What's wrong?" Ruby asked, waddling up to Stitch with her hands clasped against her chest in concern. What was obvious to everyone else had escaped her. That made it even worse for Stitch.

"Meega-O-Itume!" Stitch screamed out at Ruby, just before jumping off the couch and shoving her to the ground.

Stitch ran for the front door, not caring to look where he was going. His head crashed straight through the plywood and his body flew through the air landing somewhere on the parking lot below.

Everyone in the room could only look in shock at the hole in the front door. Emerald put one paw to her bottom lip. She knew Stitch didn't like them, but she had no idea he would react that strongly. Everyone else was stunned in their positions, their minds still in the process of sorting out just what happened. Everyone except Ruby, began to cry on the spot.

* * *

The starry night sky with its magnified half moon was the only thing peaceful now. Stitch's life was going to be thrown into chaos by what just happened. It was only made worse by the fact that he had no idea how long they would have to be here before they had to go back to wherever and whenever they came from. Stitch sniffled from the wind, but teared from his own frustration. The thought that they might be there for years was the most frightening of all. They were clearly not only more well behaved than him, but more affectionate and more useful. They were met with hostility at first, but it would only be a matter of time before their appeal among everyone in the household would outgrow his own. After all, they could cook, speak fluent English, do household repairs, and tolerate even the most obscene slatherings of attention. He couldn't compete with someone like that, let alone three someones. It would only be a matter of time before they replaced him.

But even that was of little consequence compared to other things. He could learn to be as well behaved and useful as them. He could eventually win back his place within his Ohana. But nothing could ever change his memories of one experiment 624. They would always be there with their pestering and nagging over how they could help, how they could make him feel better. The thought was too much for Stitch to bare.

Stitch looked over and found a still green coconut firmly attached to the top of the tree he sat on. The last one still there, and only because it was still unripe. In a flash Stitch grabbed the adolescent coconut and snapped it from its stem on the top of the tree. He held it in one hand in front of his face. Stitch gnarred and grit his teeth before crushing the coconut to small pieces in his one hand.

"Stitch?"

That was Lilo's voice.

Stitch looked over the side at Lilo in the parking lot. She looked right up at him. It was too late now. She'd seen the glint of his eyes. She would park herself beneath that tree all night to get him to talk if that's what it would take. Better to get this over and done with right now so he can get back to wallowing.

Stitch steeped off the edge of the tree and fell straight down, landing on his feet on the pavement right behind a bit of a surprised Lilo. It wasn't the most comfortable of ways to exit a palm tree, but it was the fastest, and that's what he wanted now more than anything.

"You know they're never going to replace you." Lilo whispered, putting her hand on Stitch's shoulder.

"Ih." Stitch answered.

"Whatever they can do, you know you and I share something they and I never could."

"Ih." Stitch said again.

"I'm sorry I was ignoring you Stitch. It's just the novelty of it all."

Novelty. It was both of their weaknesses. Lilo could never help herself but to embrace it, and Stitch never much cared for it. It was the one thing that separated them more times than anything else. The novelty would ware off though and Lilo would come back to him. But that didn't make him feel any better. That's not really what made him feel bad to begin with.

"So if that's not the problem. Will you at least tell me what is?"

Stitch sighed. He looked up to the sky and pointed toward one particular star. Lilo knew immediately what he was referring to. Humans called the star Epsilon Cygnus. Lilo only knew it by it's Tantalog name though, Tuton Bel. It was the star where the asteroid prison holding Dr. Hamsterveil was built. It was also where all the experiments they had lost were being held.

"Angel?" Lilo asked. "How does this have to do with her?"

"No privacy."

"I see." Lilo nodded her head and sat down next to Stitch, who sat down just afterward. Lilo leaned her head against Stitch's shoulder. "You really do want to be left alone when she sends you those deliveries."

"Ih."

"Well, if what they say is true, than if they can't stop the Hamsterveil in the future, then we'll all be dead, including Angel."

Stitch sighed. He knew it was true. Still, that didn't make him feel better.

"How 'bout if I make sure they don't bother you during those special times of yours?"

As much as they all seemed to love Lilo, maybe she really could get them to leave him alone. It was worth a shot at least. Stitch nodded and yawned, not physically, but emotionally tired.

"Why don't you come back inside?" Lilo asked. "Nani and David promised they wouldn't get mad at you, and the others are already in bed."

Lilo and Stitch stood up and slowly walked back toward the staircase to David's second floor apartment.

* * *

Dawn broke hours earlier. Steam poured from the door to the bathroom of the living deck so thick that it was difficult to see only a few feet into it. A very low rumbling came from the entrance of the door. The rumble carried through the metal walls and to the kitchen on the same deck, as did the steam.

A small blob of lard and yellow fuzz tried in vain to apply the last drop of his specially ordered stone ground mustard placed perfectly on the tip of a scalpel to the last empty spot on his freshly toasted black rye. The tiniest and most precise of movements were required to get this just right. 625 stared intently at that last tiny empty spot through a monocular squeezed between his eye muscles. The slightest dapping on the bread with the scalpel and the mustard covered the empty spot with perfect thickness, stopping just short of the crust line.

625 smirked as a job well done and stabbed that scalpel into the polymer countertop before lifting the rye slice between his fingers. But it was not meant to be. The rye was soggy from the steam. It squished like a sponge and broke in half. The second half fell helplessly down onto the countertop, landing mustard side down, splattering the condiment across the counter with is unmistakable _spoo-uck_ sound.

The thing of beauty, the thing of genius, the priceless work of art, it was ruined! The presentation slice had just been reduced to muck! 625 could tolerate many things, but this was going overboard.

"Noooo!"625 screamed, dropping to his knees and pulling on his ears before hitting his head against the countertop. "My masterpiece! What have you done to it?"

The "you" 625 referred to was of course his fifteen and a half foot tall, semi-aquatic roommate. Everything was perfect. The roast beef was perfect, the bacon was perfect, the tomato and butter lettuce was fresh picked and sliced, and mustard was stone ground in Barcelona, wherever the hell that was, and it was all destroyed by the damn steam billowing into the kitchen, the fault of the aforementioned roommate.

"Gantuuuuu!" 625 screamed again before dropping off the side of the counter and stomping as loud as he could toward the entrance to the bathroom, which wasn't all that impressive to say the least.

625 put on his best irate face and stared down the behemoth with his lip quivering and his fists clenched almost painfully tight. The behemoth didn't respond, nor could he since his eyes were closed and unable to see 625's expression. The hot steam from the opened heating duct blew in 625's face condensing in drops on the tips of his ears, dripping onto his shoulders. 625 didn't even care about the dampness his rage was so great.

The great fishlike being in front of him stood almost motionless on one led bend as far as it could while the other crossed itself around the knee. His arms thrust straight forward and he breathed as deeply as he could.

"Gantu!" 625 screamed again.

"Wha? Ahhh!"

Gantu lost his balance and fell over onto his side. He figured the lazy bastard would come charging in with some ridiculous demand sometime, but didn't think it would've been this soon.

"How dare you interrupt me during my meditation'." Gantu shouted as soon as he was able to sit back up.

"How dare your mediwhatever turn my masterpiece of a toasted BLT into mush." 625 shouted right back.

"Mediwhatever? I'll have you know that was a highly respected and renowned form of physical exercise and mental relaxation, and the only way I'm ever going to be able to stand living with you!"

"Exercise and relaxation? Looks more to me like you're trying to either give yourself heatstroke or break your own back, neither of which I particularly mind."

"It's called Bikram Yoga, and the heat and steam are necessary to get the most out of it." Gantu grumbled, trying to get back into his previous position. "And you're stupid sandwich is of little importance compared to my physical and psychological well being."

"Stupid? Little importance?" that got 625's blood boiling. "How could you possibly say that about roast beef? If you don't take that back right now I'm gonna' make sure those contortions of yours are permanent!"

"I would like to see you try."

"I'd sure as hell like to show ya."

"Gantu!"

"I told you…"

Tht last scream didn't come from 625. The voice was even more irritating than that, like a rake dragged across a chalkboard. There was only one place that could've come from, and that was the comm. screen.

"Oh no, not now." Gantu groaned.

Gantu let himself fall back and caught himself with his hands behind him. After standing up he was met with a screen only inches from his face showing live feed of very disgruntled looking vermin.

"What is this with the precipitation clouding my vision and you not outside looking for experiments?" Dr. Hamsterveil shrieked.

"I was just exercising Dr. honest." Gantu tried to respond in as humble a voice as possible. "It clears my mind and makes me more ready for hunting."

"First thing first Gantu. Turn off the fogging fogginess!"

"Of course sir."

Gantu rushed into the bathroom the turn the off the valve letting out the steam and punch open the window to let the positive pressure suck it out. He took a deep breath and turned back around to find the comm. screen had followed him inside and was again only inches from his face. Gantu yelped and fell backward onto the toilet.

"You can obtain plenty of exercise during your experiment hunting. DURING! NOT BEFORE!"

"Actually I think he was trying to give himself heatstroke." 625 butted in.

"You can give yourself heatstroke AFTER I have all my experiments!" Hamsterveil immediately shouted at Gantu, pressing the screen against his face. "I need you alive until then. Or else I will kill you!"

625 dropped his head into his paw and shook it at the ridiculous remark.

"Warning, experiment 595 activated." Suddenly sounded the experiment container. "Primary function, controls heat and cold."

"So what are you waiting for Gantu?" Hamsterveil picked up right where the computer left off. "Go g..t me ..y ex..er….men.."

The screen of the comm. went static and the swingard dropped the panel to the floor where it hit with a thud. Gantu and 625 looked at each other a bit confused. 625 leaned over to look at the screen. The static still crackled.

"What just happened?" 625 asked.

"One of the couplings must've blew." Gantu answered. "But we can worry about that later, right now we need to go catch 595."

"Actually I don't think it was a coupling."

"And why not?"

"Because the screen is turning back on."

Gantu looked down to see the static fading away into darkness. A face slowly emerged onscreen. It was Dr. Hamsterveil again, but something was different about him. Or maybe it wasn't him but the fact that there was no view of his cell. The background was almost totally black. Hamsterveil himself had a certain look to him. It was angry and direly serious, and in that sense it was no different from the way he looked any other time. But this look lacked the kind of laughable childishness normally present. It was something that genuinely almost scared Gantu to look at.

The swingarm lifted the comm. screen back up, resting it several feet away from Gantu. This was something else different, and rather worrying.

"Dr. Hamsterveil, I'm going after 595 right now just as you told me to."

"What are you talking about?" Hamsterveil snapped back quickly.

"I uhh… experiment 595 was just activated. You were telling me to go get it."

"Right, right, right." Hamsterveil shook his head while answering. "Forget about 595 for now, I have a new assignment for you."

"A new assignment?"

"Hey what's with the pitch black?" 625 butted in.

"Not now-"

"It must be a malfunction in signal decompression." Hamsterveil interrupted Gantu. "You may repair it at your leisure."

Gantu and 625 looked at each other again. This was not how Dr. Hamsterveil behaved, at least not normally.

"The little earth girl and 626 have acquired three new experiments." Hamsterveil continued. "It is of utmost importance that these experiments are kept busy and out of the way of things for the next three days."

"You're not going to have me capture them?" Gantu asked.

"No. You need only make sure they are kept continuously distracted by you, for three days."

"Very god Dr. I'll make sure I do that."

"I will be sending reinforcements of my own to assist you in any way you deem necessary. You had better succeed."

With that, the screen cut out.Gantu pushed the terminal out of the way and walked toward the elevator.

"What's with that?" 625 asked. "What are you doing?"

"You heard the doctor, there's been a change in plans, and there's nothing for me to do until these reinforcements arrive."

"And you're just going along with all of this like nothing's wrong?"

"Is there?"

625 ran toward the elevator following Gantu, and hopped on just as it was beginning to ascend.

"Do you know just how weird he was acting?" 625 asked, sounding just a bit desperate.

"Why would that concern me?"

"Well because maybe that wasn't ol' Hammy we were talkin' to."

"You're delusional 625."

"We'll see about that."

The conversation stopped right as the elevator reached the bridge deck of the ship.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Author notes: At long last I've updated my fanfictions! Do you know why? BECAUSE SCHOOL'S OUT: ))  
The past four weeks were the last third of the college term, and during that time I'm always much too loaded with work to do anything fanfiction related. Do you know what kind of hours it takes to write five thousand words in three days? But anywho, I'm taking the summer off, so all throughout you can expect regular updates.

* * *

Lilo was on her knees puling at Nani's pant legs. It was her favorite way to get what she wanted out of Nani, and it usually worked, especially when she was able to force up false tears from some reservoir. Lilo altered her voice every sentence from sobbing to screaming and back again. By now Lilo had gotten pretty good at being able to tell beforehand what she would be able to weasel out of Nani and what she wouldn't. Lilo knew what she wanted now had very little chance of getting Nani's approval. But it was too important just to give up on. 

Lilo yanked at Nani's jean leggings at every emphasized syllable.

"Please Nani! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please!" Lilo begged, yanking with each _please_.

"It's too dangerous Lilo," Nani countered. "I'll let you do it after this situation is all over."

Stitch heard nothing of this conversation just outside the living room except for a droll hum. He sat on the gray denim couch with one arm on the right armrest and the other below his chin, his forefinger rhythmically waving back and forth. Stitch was too lost in thought to pay attention to anything outside himself. It was obvious to anyone knowledgeable what he was thinking about. The past few days, and what were the implications for him and Angel. Hamsterveil had Angel right now, and the smell of her fur gave away the kind of continuous, half conscious torment she was being put through. According to the freeloaders, their own Hamsterveil was planning an attack on his time. That certainly meant something for him and Angel, but exactly what it was he could not fathom.

Stitch jerked his head to the left as a third voice brought him back to the here and now.

"What's all the racket about?" asked a half-dressed, bed headed David just emerging from the hall behind the living room currently rubbing his left eye.

"Nani won't let me go looking for experiments!" Lilo instantly took the opportunity to shout back.

"Well, why won't you?" David asked nani.

"Because its too dangerous!" Nani snapped back. "What with all this whatever going on, I'm sorry I just can't allow it."

That last part was clearly directed back at Lilo. She turned her attention away from David and back toward her older sister. Lilo grabbed Nani's pant legs and yanked again.

"It's not too dangerous!" Lilo shouted. "Stitch will be there to protect me! Right Stitch?"

Lilo turned her head toward Stitch at those last two words. It caught him off guard, as he was only half paying attention to them in the first place. He quickly tried to think of some way to respond.

"Uhmm… Ih."

"See Nani!" Lilo pleaded. "I told you Stitch would be there to protect me."

"And that's the only reason I let you go out experiment hunting normally." Nani not quite shouted back. "But this situation's too much. I'm sorry, but not until it's all resolved."

"I don't see there isn't anything Stitch can't take care of." David interrupted.

"Well you don't know just how many times I've seen him come hoe badly hurt."

"Hurt? Stitch?"

"It is possible, however much you don't believe it."

"Nani!" Lilo yelled, at last getting both of the to pause and look down at her. "I'm not catching bugs! They're people too, I can't just let them stay out there all lost and stuff."

Nani huffed and rested her forehead in her palm. "I'm sure they can take care of themselves for just a few days."

"Now you're just being-"

"If stitch isn't enough, we'll go with her too."

Each person in the room looked at each other, not immediately recognizing the voice that just spoke. After less than a second they discovered to look down behind David, where ruby stood with all four hands clasped, and Sapphire following behind.

"Yeah," Sapphire added, not really paying attention. "We'll go with… We'll go with her?"

Sapphire's darted his head toward Ruby. His ending seemed panic stricken. Ruby nodded her head excitedly with a large smile while Sapphire violently shook his head and waved his hands out in front of him.

Ruby's sudden interjection got the attention of Stitch as well. Stitch joined with Sapphire in frantic flailing about with his hands and shaking his head. Soon they were both swiping fingers across their throats, though each for a different reason. Stitch at this point wanted only a quiet morning by himself to reflect on what has happened recently, what might happen, and what would be the deeper meaning of it all. Sapphire's reason was more dire.

"Well…" Nani huffed. "I suppose with the two of you and Emerald and Stitch going with her it would be ok. Alright Lilo, you can go experiment hunting."

"Yeah!" Lilo yelled at the top of her lungs as both Sapphire and Stitch pulled at their ears in frustration.

* * *

The previous night's shower left dew on all available surfaces, and the road several shades darker than normal. But for the downpour during last night's sleep, the sun so early in the morning swept all but a few clouds away, and even in its brevity, left the dirt dry enough for the squeamish to walk on without concern. But that's the way it went in Kauai. A torrential downpour could go on for an hour, and an hour after it ended, there would be no sign that it was ever there. They all heard the rain beating against the roof of David's apartment, and Lilo knew there would be new experiments running about after that. 

Lilo walked along the sidewalk through the main shopping road of Kokaua. It was a place all of them knew quite well, though for a portion it was both less crowded, and more dilapidated. The sun left no one indoors that day. Almost everyone they knew in town they passed up.

Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire all had hidden their extra extremities, except for Sapphire who had none. They all followed Lilo intently while Stitch lagged behind, dashing only to catch up when it looked as if they would go out of his sight. Stitch grumbled incoherently to himself as he passed by old cars, old shops with peeling paint, small gardens, masses of weeds, and streams. What occupied his mind at that moment was not Angel nor Lilo, but these strange new experiments themselves. How much longer would they have to stay here with him? Not necessarily how much longer would they stay on this island, in this time, or whatever the proper phrasing of that question was, but how long until he could get some time to himself to continue thinking? Stitch dug his nails into his paws as he thought more. Would he ever really be their friend? What would that mean for him and Lilo? What would that mean for him and his occasional need for solitude? They insist that in the future they all would be friends. How would that affect his life? Certainly it would resemble nothing of the life he has now. So what would it be like?

Though aware of it, Stitch paid no mind to the equally serious conversation going on in front of him.

"We can't interfere!" Sapphire would've screamed at Ruby had he not been whispering. "I refuse to believe even you can't see the importance of keeping our present intact. That means we intervene only when he have to, and we can't be seen by the public as anything more than pets!"

"That's what I was doing!" Ruby cried back. "This is what they'd do normally isn't it? So I'm just letting them do it!"

"She is right about that." The third, and thus far silent of the siblings added. Sapphire stopped in his tracks. His jaw hung open as Emerald walked by him with her arms folded.

"Beaten in an argument by Ruby." Sapphire whispered to himself.

"And don't forget your slipup with the shaved ice guy." Emerald continued as she passed him.

Sapphire shook his had and ran to catch up after he was passed by Stitch.

Lilo strolled along as if unaware of the conflicts going on right behind her. Her mind was set on alert mode and she was looking for anything out of the ordinary, aside from the out of the ordinary seen every day in this town. Lilo's eyes darted to and fro searching for any sign of an unrecognizable creature. Around and over the roof of Kiki's coffee hut, through the alleys and windows of the two or three trinket shops, through the bins of old lady Hasagawa's food stands situated in the grass and dirt between a trinket shop and a pizzeria. Despite her intensity, youth overwhelmed Lilo, and a familiar sight canceled her Alert mode.

"Victoria!" Lilo shouted, waving her hands in the air.

Victoria was running toward her, Snooty held to her chest, and her face rife with worry.

"Victoria!" Ruby shouted right back, before two blue furred hands pressed themselves against her mouth from behind. Sapphire's harsh whisper rang in her ear.

"We can't let her see us." Sapphire spat out. "We have to hide."

With that, Sapphire and Ruby dashed out of sight into a convenient patch of especially tall grass lining the alley between the pizzeria and the post office.

Emerald ran toward Lilo, briefly whispering into Lilo's ear, "We were never here." Before joining the others in the grass. Lilo nodded in acknowledgement.

Victoria stopped just in front of Lilo and leaned over to breath heavily. She placed and arm on Lilo's shoulder. Lilo grasp the hand and looked back down at Victoria rather worried.

"You alright?" Lilo asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Victoria answered between breaths.

Victoria leaned up and back in one last breath, causing Snooty to flap his wings with an obvious look of relief.

"You know," Lilo said, looking down at snooty. "I think you were suffocating him when you balled him up like that."

Victoria blinked her eyes in confusion for a moment before looking back down at Snooty and lifting him up, cradling him in her arms.

"I'm so sorry!" Victory sighed.

Snooty gave out a brief snort. Lilo giggled.

"I think that means he forgives you."

"Yeah he does." Vicoria answered, letting Snooty suck on her finger. "Oh yeah! Who were those other three experiments who were with you?"

The words _we were never here_, flashed through Lilo's mind.

"What other experiments?"

"The other three that were with you! The ones that ran away when I came near!"

"I didn't have any others with me."

"Well whatever. Oh, what's wrong with Stitch?"

"Huh?"

Stitch wasn't anywhere near Lilo. She followed Victoria's gaze and a few buildings down she saw Stitch laying on his back on top of one of the table umbrella's a Kikki's. His hands rested behind his head, each with one pinky wrapped around the end of the pole sticking up from the fabric. He stared straight up into the sky. He only hoped they wouldn't find an experiment today.

"I don't know." Lilo said. "He's been like that all morning."

"We'll there's more important things right now." Victoria instantly said back. "There's a new experiment on the loose!"

Lilo shook her head and swung it right back toward Victoria. "A new experiment! That's great I was just looking for one!"

"Well, this one's got differently colored eyes."

At that time, emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire were still hiding in their patch of grass. Something about those three words, _differently colored eyes_, made emerald's eat skip a beat. Her breathing instantly quickened and her pupils dilated. A single tear welled up in her eye as she remembered the events that led her to know what had happened to whom specifically she was thinking of.

"_Lady Zafyrie?" Ruby asked. "Where's Angel and Stitch? Where's my Ohana?"_

_Zafyrie closed her eyes. She didn't want to tell them this, but she had to._

"_After his hostile takeover. Hamsterviel's first target was Earth. He used the fusion cannons on the Zodiac to melt the polar ice caps, and then to boil the oceans. Stitch, Angel, all your other siblings, and your adoptive human family… are all dead."_

_The gleeful faces of the three little creatures shattered upon hearing those words._

_They could only hold it in a few seconds. They all burst out into tears buried their heads in Zafyrie's legs. Zafyrie could barely manage to wrap her arms all the way around them, and hold them closer to her._

Zafyrie… Emerald and her brother and sister were among the few in the galaxy who on a first name basis with the overseer of the Federation's Grand Council. Though as she knew it, it only existed here in the past. A fugitive delivered the news of her home and family's destruction to her at that point. Those words, _two differently colored eyes_, brought it all back to her, as one particular experiment who fit that description was all she thought about the moment she first of what happened to the earth she knew.

What suddenly happened to Emerald was not lost on either of her siblings. Emerald had always put up the guise of the perfect leader, lady, and hostess, but they both knew she was something quite different.

Emerald crawled forward, now almost peaking out from the grass.

"She's gonna lose it." Sapphire whispered to Ruby.

"Two different colored eyes?" Emerald almost wheezed.

Emerald began to crawl out of the grass when the weight of both her siblings fell on her back and pushed her to the ground. That was enough to bring her back to her senses.

"You can't be seen by Victoria." Sapphire whispered into Emerald's ear. "And you especially can't be seen by him."

"Where is it? What is it doing?" Lilo shouted at Victoria, almost jumping up and down.

"He's burning trees and then freezing them!" Victoria shouted back. "He's almost at the edge of town!"

Snooty added a snort to the end of Victoria's statement.

"Burning and then freezing?" Emerald whispered to herself. She got back up on her hands and feet and started to crawl forward again, before again being dragged back to the ground by the force of her siblings.

"Stitch!" Lilo shouted.

Stitch grumbled to himself and sat up scratching his stomach, now with only one hand holding himself on top of the umbrella. He knew what that meant. Lilo had found an experiment. Stitch didn't like it, at least not at the moment, but he had a job to do. He let go of the pole and slid off the umbrella, landing on his feet on the table below.

Immediately Stitch off the table and into the street as the customers who sat below him shrieked in surprise and all spilled their drinks.

"Hurry up!" Lilo shouted again. "It's a burner and freezer in one!"

Stitch landed poised right next to Lilo to see the first glimpse of this new experiment walking down the street, past the first few abandoned, decrepit wood boxes that made up the edge of Kokaua.

It looked quite a bit like Stitch. It had the same basic body design. The face was sculpted a bit more angularly, a bit more predator like, and his ears were short and pointed straight up, appearing almost fox-like. He was not quite a foot taller than Stitch. His fur was a bright orange with a sky blue belly. From here Stitch could see his eyes, the left bright blue, and the right bright red.

"Kelvin?" Emerald said to herself, getting up again, and again being dragged back to the ground by Ruby and Sapphire.

"Kelvin can't see you!" Sapphire whispered harshly. "Remember that above all!"

Victoria screamed and ran away, her and snooty hiding behind the wall of the first available trinket shop, and both barely peering out to watch. Lilo and Stitch both held their ground watching the new experiment The experiment casually walking toward them from so many blocks away.

The experiment stopped and grinned to himself. He narrowed his right red eye and widened his left blue one. The eye shined like a blue flash light. He turned his head toward the first of the old abandoned sheds in front of him. White mist shot out of his eye engulfing the building. After just a second The experiment blinked and the jet stopped. The old building was covered in a layer of opaque white ice several inches this, and the surrounding ground in snow. The experiment turned toward his other side and widened his red eye. Flames spewed forth as if from a geyser, totally enveloping the second old building. After another second, The experimentg blinked and the geyser stopped. A pile of smolders was left.

The experiment stared right at Lilo and stitch and grinned wider this time. He knew another experiment when he saw it, and was daring them to attack him.

Lilo's body was clenched and she took two steps back.

Stitch did not seem impressed. He cracked his neck, leaning it side to side, and his back twisting, and ran down the street on all fours.

The experiment stood motionless waiting for Stitch to get close enough. As he did, The experiment widened his red eye, and a stream of fire shot forward toward Stitch. Stitch jumped into the air to dodge the blast. The experiment's eye followed him with his eye, but the fire couldn't keep up.

Stitch landed on his feet inches in front of The experiment and pounced on him, pinning his shoulders to the ground.

"Naga emba-dooka!" Stitch barked right into The experiment's face, snarling at him as soon as it was over.

The experiment smiled and spoke in a voice fittingly pitched for his size, raspy and yet smooth at once. "Dobou-patookie."

A bight red light shone in Stitch's face, and the next he was some distance in the air surrounded by white fire. It was only slightly painful against his skin, but it seared the insides of his nostrils and felt like acid against his eyes. He wanted to scream, but didn't want fire to get down his throat.

"Stitch." Emerald whimpered.

"No!" Sapphire hushed.

The flames stopped and Stitch could at last see how far up from the earth he was. It was over fifty feet. He fell back down and landed faee first on the concrete, smashing it. The experiment continued to walk forward just as slow as before, occasionally turning his head to freeze a car or burn down a tree.

Stitch lifted up his hands and pushed down on the concrete, lifting his head from the pothole created by his face. His fur was blackened and the skin underneath tingled and burned slightly. The impact made him see double. Stitch stood up, almost falling over at first, but righting himself and again running after The experiment.

The experiment stopped, seeing the burned Stitch still alive and in fighting condition. Shock was abound on The experiment's face, but soon it was replaced by Anger.

"Blitznack!" The experiment screamed.

Stitch didn't know exactly where he was going. He tried to run up between the two images of The experiment he saw, but was too disoriented to see the light building up in front of him. Only feet from The experiment, Stitch reared back a claw to swipe between the images. Before he could begin to swing forward, everything went gray, and his mind became foggy.

The experiment had widened his blue eye. Waiting for perfect moment to strike, when Stitch was right in front of him, and could jump out of the way fast enough, he released his jet of cold. What was left of Stitch was a block of opaque ice roughly in his shape, fused with the street.

From behind their trinket shop shield, Snooty started growling and squealing and flapping his wings in Victoria's arms.

"Uhh… all right go get him." Victoria said before letting go of her experiment.

Snooty flew high up into the air, out of sight of The experiment, again casually walking forward, now passing up Mrs. Hasagawa's stand, the only person besides Lilo who wasn't hiding from the flurry.

Snooty arched his wings straight back and plunged downward toward The experiment. The experiment looked up just in time to see a thing dive-bombing him. They bashed faces and each fell down to the pavement nearly unconscious.

Victoria jumped slightly hearing rustling behind her. She turned to see that Lilo was now right beside her shielding herself with the trinket shop.

"Why aren't you helping Stitch!" Victoria whined.

"Stitch is fine." Lilo barked back. "He's shrugged off things much worse than that. I'm worried about Snooty. Do you think he can handle it?"

"I don't know."

Both experiments in the street fumbled over themselves trying to be the first to stand up, but neither did so faster than the other. As soon as Snooty had regained his composure, he saw a glowing red eye staring at him.

In a flash Snooty was in the air, just barely having avoided the jet of flame that passed right by Mrs. Hasagawa, singing the tips of her hair. Snooty fluttered about over the food stands as unpredictably as a moth, dodging every stream of fire that came his way.

Mrs. Hasagawa was oblivious to the fact the fire shot through the air just above her. She sprayed her produce and stopped only once to make a snide and somewhat senile comment.

"It's too hot, somebody turn down the sun."

The experiment snarled under his breath. His spray of fire just wasn't fast enough to hit the thing taunting him. He narrowed his right eye and opened up his left. A surge of cold flew past Snooty, clipping his wing and sending him spinning to the ground.

Icy mist poured down onto Mrs. Hasagawa's stand coating everything in the slightest frost.

"Ahhh… That's better." She sighed in relief, and continued to spray her produce.

Snooty crashed into the ground rolling over himself several times before winding to a stop and folding his now useless wing beneath him. The experiment walked up to Snooty with teeth bared and clenched. Snooty squealed a tried to fly, but only flapped his way a few feet into the air before falling back down.

"Snooty!" Victoria screamed, and ran out in the middle of the street. She covered Snooty with her won body.

"Victoria no!" Lilo screamed and ran after her. She tried pulling Victoria off Snooty but couldn't.

Soon, they all saw a light glowing brighter in front of them. All three stopped and looked to see the enraged The experiment now with both eyes glowing and staring at them. They were stunned and helpless but to watch.

"Lilo! Victoria!" Emerald shrieked.

All six tendrils sprouted from her, throwing Ruby and sapphire from her and into the street.

"No don't" Sapphire screamed, reaching for her with one hand.

Emerald propelled herself into the air with her bottom tendrils. The experiment turned his head and had only time to see two green ropes flying at his face. They struck his jaw and sent him spinning before landing on the ground.

The tendrils from Emerald's head reached back and grabbed a lemon from Hasagawa's stand. The tendrils holding it in front of her face, Emerald sliced the top off with her claw and then squeezed all its juice into her mouth.

Growling and roaring, the experiment stood up and faced Emerald from inches away. Both his eyes glowed, but before he could unleash anything, Emerald sprayed all the juice from her mouth right into his eyes. The experiment instantly dropped to the ground holding his eyes and shrieking in pain. He rolled over and over aimlessly.

"Emerald…" Lilo whispered. "You saved us."

"Emerald?" Victoria asked. She looked over to Sapphire and Ruby still getting up and rubbing their heads. "So there really were three others with you."

"Kelvin is powerless with his eyes closed." Emerald said calmly, looking down with a bizarre mix of sorrow and pride over a very distraught experiment writhing and gurgling. "He won't be a problem any more."

Sapphire stood up and saw it all. Just as he predicted, Emerald lost her self-control and acted on instinct. Victoria, Snooty, and Kelvin were now aware of them, and they would all want to know where they came from. There was no way Lilo would lie to Victoria. The last barrier had been broken. The odds were infinitesimal now.

Sapphire dropped to his knees and pulled on his ears. His head leaned up to the sky and he clenched his teeth. He breathed as deeply as he could and tried to scream louder than he ever had before, but nothing came out. Sapphire could only cry now. Tears running down his fur, he stood up and walked away toward no where in particular.

* * *

Stitch didn't know who thawed him or how. He only regained consciousness on the couch of David's apartment after everyone else there had fallen asleep, including the new experiment caught by none other than the freeloaders. Now the new experiment slept in a capture container and blindfolded with a long bandage. It was strange that emerald should choose to sleep next to that instead of on the pile of blankets in the living room floor with the rest of the experiments. 

Stitch woke up to find that, and Jumba sleeping on the couch, while Pleakly slept on the foldout chair covered by about six sheets. If he knew Nani, she'd be sleeping with Lilo in the master bedroom while David would be forced to sleep in the guest bedroom.

But that had happened hours ago. Right now, Stitch was out on the asphalt shingle roof. The only sounds were of the wind and the occasional coqui frog, a great relief from the earlier racket. An assortment of whatever he could scrounge lay out in front of him. This time it was a bottle of instant hand sanitizer, tweezers, several hand towels, another bunch of cotton balls, a quarter gallon carton of pass-o-guava, and a leftover slice of pizza, both from David's fridge.

Stitch muttered angrily to himself angrily as he just as angrily grabbed each of his items and shoved them inside his green backpack. The freeloaders insisted on ruining his reflections, accompanying him and Lilo. And now it was they, not him, who saved her. It wouldn't be long before she would be telling them improvised bedtime stories about fictionalized versions of themselves.

Stitch's attention was caught by a light scratching. He focused his ears and heard it again, coming from the other side of the roof. He looked out across the roof. A hand reached out and pulled the face of ruby out from the edge of the roof. Stitch clutched the backpack to his chest while he growled at ruby pulling herself up to his side of the roof.

"That's for angel isn't it?" Ruby asked.

"Gaba?" The question caught Stitch off guard. He quickly growled at her again. "Gaba Angel haka nota?"

Ruby sat down on the top of the roof and looked up at the sky. Stitch blinked and looked up with her.

"Angel always used to tell us how you would give her what she needed to stay alive when she was with Hamsterveil. She said she wouldn't have survived without it… at least not her spirit anyway.  
"She never talked about what happened to her when she was there with him and whenever we asked she changed the subject. I guess you're the only one who'll ever really know. But we all know this.  
"She didn't really love you when you first met. She cared about you, but more like you were a pet than an equal. It was also that way when she was taken. She fell in love with you only after she was sent to Hamsterveil. It was all the nice things you sent her, that's what did it for her.  
"I just came by to give you these"

Ruby extended a lower arm from hiding. In it she grasped a box of Jr. Mints.

"They were always her favorite."

For a moment Stitch forgot about his hostile feelings toward this experiment. He looked straight into her eyes with nothing more than a gentle curiosity in his own. He looked for what exactly she was. What he found was a creature utterly incapable of dishonesty. Maybe it was just because of how simple she was, or maybe something more. Whatever the cause, Stitch suddenly felt a little bit less angry with her and her siblings.

Ruby walked forward and put the box of Jr. mints down in front Stitch before walking toward the edge of the roof. Stitch looked at the box of Jr. Mints in front of him and imagined that maybe would grow to like those so much precisely because of Ruby's actions tonight.

Ruby walked to the edge of the roof and was about to jump down to the sidewalk when Stitch spoke up.

"Ruby?"

Ruby stopped and turned her head toward Stitch.

"Takka." Stitch said.

Ruby smiled and nodded at Stitch. She turned back and looked at the sky again. Sniffing a bit, Ruby suddenly snorted and extended her tongue up into her nose, digging out whatever she could before sucking it back into her mouth. Then she stepped off.

Stitch was in a bit of shock from what he just saw. That was something done only by him and a very few other experiments he was especially close to. Not in a hundred years would he have expected Ruby to do that.

Stitch huffed to himself, "hummm…"


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Author Notes:** I apologize for not updating in so long, but two very distinct things happened to prevent me. First off I'm currently studying for my Driver's Permit test, which takes quite a long time as the booklet is 118 pages long. Seccond, a week long heat wave hit the west coast smashing all previous reccords. I was just too miserable then to be motivated to do much of anything. Fortunately, once it ended, the temperature dropped so far that it now feels like spring.

**Story Notes: **This is the chapter where I finally tell you all what most of you have figured out already. For those few who haven't, I'm not saying right here and now.  
Also, I told a couple of you that this fic would eventually become M-Rated. Well, I now deciced against that. It'll stay the rating it is throughout.

* * *

Things were oddly quiet aboard the crashed and crippled ship stranded in the middle of the Alakai Swamp. Things were even more oddly still there as well. The lights were dimmed down and all of the sensor systems were shut off. It was that way because he demanded it, and whatever he demanded, they had to obey. 

625 was getting a slight cramp from standing up so straight and stiff. He'd never remembered being asked to do anything like this before, and on the landing level no less. All previous communications had taken place on the bridge. 625 slumped forward a bit to comfort his aching side. He'd been standing like this motionless for the past twenty minutes, and keeping proper posture wasn't something he was used to. 625 winced as he pressed a hand into his side and started to tap his foot in boredom. A nudge from another foot twice the size of his entire body brought him back to attention. The way that report looked, even he was scared to be seen acting casual.

The giant next to him seemed no better. Though he certainly found it easier to physically, as he was trained to keep both proper posture and fitness, he was no less nervous. They both read that same document.

"Why all the cloak and dagger stuff?" 625 whispered from the side of his mouth.

"With threats like those I make it a point not to ask." Gantu whispered right back. "But I can only assume he doesn't want us tracing his movements."

"That's the thing, we already know where he is. And we don't even know if he's able to deliver on what spews out of his mouth."

"Have you been reading the news lately?"

"I don't read news." 625 said back, digging into an ear with his nail. He immediately realized what he did and stood back at attention.

Gantu grumbled, not realizing 625's sudden ere in stance, and quickly retorted. "I'm talking about blankets of fog suddenly enveloping whole sections of the island, along with electrical activity that's just as crazy. The computer's been calling out experiments that have already been activated. There's no explanation for any of it, yet in the report he seems to know all about it."

"So what's that supposed to mean for us?" 625 asked.

"I don't know, but I've learned that in situations like this the best thing for you to do is to shut up and do what your told, and you should learn that too."

625 grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Gantu glanced at him momentarily and decided it would be best to stay silent. They both stood there a few minutes more before static buzzed over the comm. system. On the landing deck they couldn't get a visual communication, which was how he wanted it, at least as far as they guessed.

The static died down into the sounds of a tuning radio, and then to nothing at all. The voice came over the comm. system. It was just like the last time, the voice that is. There was no boasting or frenzied speech. There were no mindless threats or meaningless insults. This was calm, collected, and straight to the point. It was rather frightening to both of them.

"Your respectful pose is noted." The voice of Dr. Hamsterveil echoed into the deck.

Gantu and 625 glanced at each other. How he knew how they were standing when they only had audio communication was beyond either of them.

"I have been doing some thinking, and there is a slight change in my plans for the three new experiments currently accompanying the little girl. They are unlike normal experiments in many ways."

"In what ways sir." Gantu asked.

"That is not for you to know." Hamsterveil answered.

The calmness and briefness of Hamsterveil's answer made a trickle of cold flow up Gantu's spine.

"These three experiments are not to be be destracted, they are to be destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Gantu suddenly asked. "Why would you not want me to capture them?"

"I do not appreciate being interrupted." Hamsterveil whispered.

Gantu took a step back and tightened his body a bit more. 625 became undone at the new orders, suddenly throwing himself into a gasp and an almost action ready stance.

"These experiments are a threat to my future," Hamsterveil continued. "and they are a threat to me. I am charging you with the task of destroying them, and to make sure you do, I am sending you reinforcements. They should be arriving shortly. And remember, they are programmed to kill you both should you fail in destroying all three of these experiments."

A click, then the sound of a tuning radio, and finally static was heard, before it shut off leaving the landing deck once again silent. Gantu slumped forward and dropped his forehead into his hands. He signed heavily before turning his attention toward a nagging yellow puff down by his feet.

"I'm not gonna have any part of this man!" 625 protested. "I can do allot of horrible and crazy stuff to the other experiments, but there's no way in hell I'm going to kill one, or three for that matter, or even help out there! I'm having no part of it man.  
"That, and what I said before, well I know its true now! That was not Hammy we were talking to!"

"How do you figure?" Gantu asked.

"Well besides the obvious one eighty in personality, do you really think Hammy would want any of the experiments dead? Do you really think that?"

The conversation ended then and there. 625 and Gantu both jumped and jerked around toward the exit hatch. Some kind of clanging rattled through the hatch and into the landing level. Three times and then the clanging was gone. Silence returned.

"Knocking?" Gantu whispered to himself.

"Who'd knock that loud?" 625 asked.

Gantu and 625 looked at each other again. Gantu cleared his throat and walked over to the exit hatch. He placed his palm against a glowing green panel. No sooner did the hatch begin to lower than a wave of the thickest pure white fog pour into the landing deck, blinding both inhabitants. Gantu stumbled back growling, covering his face with one hand and waving in front of him with the other. It was done more out of shock than anything, as the fog was nothing more than its name suggested.

Gantu fell back onto his butt onto the floor. The shock forced his eyes open and he stared out into the fog. He couldn't see anything, not even his hand in front of his face the fog was so thick. The soft pattering of small footsteps slowly came about, and came closer. They stopped just in front of Gantu. Gantu flipped around and crawled about, feeling his way around, trying to find some kind of control panel.

It was found, but not by him. Mechanical wheezing hummed and the vent fans turned on, and the exit hatch began to close. The fans slowly sucked the fog out of the room. Gantu turned around to find hazy silhouettes becoming clearer. They were the silhouettes of experiments, all ones that he had seen before. The fog cleared completely now. The experiments there Gantu had indeed seen before.

"221? 601? 619?" Gantu. "No… you're not them."

Gantu referred to the experiments known as Sparky, Kixx, and Splodyhead. They were all there, in fact there were three of each of them. But none of them were the colorful beings Gantu had remembered. They were all dull grays and tans. Their eyes were all pure white. Their face seemed content, but otherwise totally devoid of expression.

"624?" Gantu continued.

A tent figure stood behind the rest, the figure of Angel, but again, the pink and white that was expected was replaced with gray and tan. She had her antennae resting on the control panel next to the exit hatch. She walked toward Gantu with her arms folded. The others moved aside to let her pass.

"You're not 624. What are you?" Gantu demanded.

The creature in front of him spoke in the voice he remembered belonging to the Experiment known as Angel, but in perfect English.

"That is not for you to know." The facsimile said to Gantu. "All you need know is that I am here to make sure you lead us to the experiments in question, so that we may do away with them."

"Maybe you're right 625, but I don't think we have a choice now." Gantu sighed out, but heard no response. "625?"

"625 took the opportunity to escape." The gray Angel explained. "but no matter. He is of no use."

Gantu sighed again. "Well, whatever these new experiments are, we shouldn't go after them all at once. We should wait until they separate and take them on one at a time."

The gray Angel nodded.

* * *

The night dragged on and everyone hiding out in David's apartment slept no wiser to what was happening. David slept on the living room couch covered in only a sheet snoring slightly. Ruby was curled up around his feet snoring a bit more loudly. Nani and Lilo shared David's bed while Stitch slept on an office chair in the same room that had been draped over with sheets and pillows. The newly captured Kelvin, apparently able to control fire and ice with his heterochromatic eyes slept rather uncomfortably inside his capture container, his blindfold still covering his eyes. Jumba shored quite loudly propped back in the recliner next to the couch while Pleakly was absolutely silent on the loveseat opposite the couch. The TV was tuned to the weather channel, whose meteorologist spouted off some report of the third unexplained fogging incident this week, not rousing the concern or even consciousness of anyone in the room. 

One inhabitant was not asleep. Emerald sat upright on the floor gazing unnerved at the TV. Her lips pressed tight as she stared wide eyed, fists clenched, in dismay at was happening. The new fogging took place in Alakai swamp, which if she remembered correctly, was where Gantu's ship was supposed to have been stranded during the original Hamsterveil fiasco since years before she was born.

"Once gain." Emerald whispered. "And this time they won't be scouts."

A green tendril extended toward the TV and pushed inward long plastic rod, turning it off, before retracting back toward emerald's forehead.

Emerald turned her head toward the coffee table between the two couches. The capture tube held Kelvin in place. He wouldn't be able to escape without making enough noise to stir the entire apartment. Something welled up inside Emerald staring at Kelvin asleep with bandages wrapped around his eyes. In her own present, Kelvin was dead. It was possible she would never see the Kelvin who found her so familiar. Her heart sped up and her breath became shallow. The more she stared at Kelvin, the more she shivered uncontrollably, until a single tear relieved her stress.

Her normal control and diligence was lost on her now. The thought of staring at Kelvin alive now when he may very well be dead in her own world was too much for her. Emerald stood up and walked over to the table. Her tendrils reached out and wrapped around the tube. She lifted it up silently waking only Kelvin inside, who still dared not open his blindfolds.

Emerald made her way into the kitchen and set the tube down on the floor. The tendrils gripped the tube and opened it, the locking mechanism not responding to force from within, easily gave way to leverage from outside.

Kelvin crawled out of the tube and stood up to feel six soft, gummy-like fingers wrap themselves around his blindfold and pull it of. He stared at Emerald for a second before backing up against the far wall in fear. Emerald followed with a somewhat curious and confused expression. Emerald's hands lifted up and rested on Kelvin's shoulders. Kelvin slid down the wall into a sitting posture in fear. Emerald leaned her head forward and touched her nose to his own, and immediately pulled it back.

"No! Stay in control." Emerald whispered to herself.

"Don't forget Kelvin," Emerald spoke with authority. "I can defeat you any time I want. But if you promise to behave, I can let you sleep on something more comfortable, and without the blindfold."

Kelvin nodded, still slightly fearful. Emerald gave a weak smile and put her hand on Kelvin's head. She then turned around and walked back out of the kitchen. Kelvin stood up and looked out at Emerald walking away slightly confused.

* * *

Stitch sat on the far left side of the couch. He held his chin up with his left arm propped against the cushion while he tapped his right fingers against his hip. First the interlopers show up, then he was forced to move into David's apartment, and now they have a new experiment living with them. Space was running out fast. Stitch glanced over at Lilo on the recliner, sitting in David's lap and wondered momentarily how she was able to take it all n so easily. His own life had been turned upside down at the recent events, no doubt so did hers. Now everyone one crammed into this apartment was going to argue about things trivial compared to what was going on. 

Emerald and Ruby sat on the right side of the couch, both looking at Stitch. Stitch glanced at them momentarily and whined under his breath. Why did they always insist on being near him? It was irritating to no end. At least they were one short of a trio. Where the blue one was, well Stitch didn't really care about that.

Everyone stared at the new experiment Kelvin sitting on the coffee table. He was definitely far more humble than he was yesterday.

"So what are we to do with this experiment?" Jumba spoke out suddenly.

Lilo looked toward the kitchen where Jumba leaned against a counter. "Well which one is it?"

Jumba opened his mouth to answer, but paused before doing so. "Is… errr… is being 595, design-ed to control both heat and cold by channeling each ability through the eye of corresponding color."

"Wait a second!" Pleakly shouted out, charging in from the hall. "That can't be right. We already have 595's pod remember? And I thought he was designed to smash glaciers and raise sea levels!"

Jumba looked down at the floor and twiddled his fingers. Those looking at him could almost think he was blushing. "595 was one of many victims of Jumba's ineptitude of cleanliness of file keeping."

"Meaning?" Nani asked from her perch on a kitchen countertop.

"Meaning sometimes Jumba's paperwork is getting so lost and scrambled that he is accidentally giving two experiments same number!"

Everyone stopped and stared at Jumba for a moment.

"Well!" Pleakly huffed. "The way you've mislabeled so many experiments this should hardly come as a surprise. You know what they say Jumba-"

"Not this again." Jumba whispered wiping a hand down his face.

"they say that a clean filing cabinet, is a happy, healthy, and more productive filing cabinet."

"Enough of your anthorpomorphizationings of inanimate objects!" Jumba yelled the instant he could get a word in.

Lilo and David both giggled, drawing a wide eyed stare from Pleakly.

"What's so funny!" Pleakly demanded. "Clean things make everything in life easier."

"Please people." Emerald interrupted, standing up. "Let's try to focus on the task at hand. We should be discussing what should be done with Kelvin."

"I think he'd be great at the aluminum recycling plant with Melty!" Lilo shouted out.

"But that's not where he works." Ruby interrupted.

About to say more, three green tendrils pushed against ruby's mouth hushing her. "what my sister means to say is, we should consider Kelvin's wishes before simply assigning him a place in society."

Everyone looked at each other, and then at Kelvin.

"Well," David Asked. "What would you like."

Kelvin looked at each of the faces in the room. Landing in the end on Emerald's. Emerald nodded her head at him.

"Mmmmhhh…" Kelvin was unsure of what to say, and a bit confused. Just yesterday this group of humans an experiments had taken him down as if it were nothing, and now they were asking him what he wanted to do "Miga kallaba haju makka gamba nota."

"595 says he wishes to know what is going on." Jumba translated.

Emerald made a single silent laugh and shook her head just a bit before looking back up and speaking. "It's a long story Kelvin and we don't have time to get into it now, but if you'll agree to stay with us in the meantime I'll fill you in later."

A quick "Ih." Was the only thing that came out of Kelvin's mouth in response.

"Now that that's settled." David spoke up, turning his head in many directions. "Where's this Sapphire fellow gone off to."

"Yeah," Lilo added. "I was going to ask the same question."

"He does this sometimes when he's upset about something." Emerald answers. "He's really a bit solitary anyway."

"Well what happened to make him upset?" David asked suddenly.

"Well…" Lilo began to answer. She licked her finger and glanced up at the ceiling. "We were fighting Kelvin yesterday. He froze Stitch into an ice cube, and he was about to burn both me and Victoria and Snooty, when suddenly emerald came and rescued us. You should've seen it, she spat lemon juice in Kelvin's eyes to take his powers away. But after that Sapphire just wandered off somewhere."

Emerald pushed herself just a little further back onto the couch and clasped her hands together. She knew why Sapphire had done that. She'd lost control, that's why he did it. No doubt he would spew it all out to the rest of them what she did wrong once he got back, which turned out to be far sooner than any of them had anticipated.

Everyone jumped in shock when the front door burst open without warning. Sapphire tottered into the living room almost stumbling over his own feet as he walked. Sapphire made a fist and hit himself in the chest to clear a belch building up in his stomach. He wore a weak, half-assed smile as a pitiful attempt to hide a grimace. Stopping for a moment to bend over and breath heavily, he straightened back up with his paw to his temple, wincing slightly at the light.

Stitch growled lightly at Sapphire's sudden appeareance, but no one seemed to notice.

"How could they get away with using such cheap crap." Sapphire mumbled to himself.

"Sapphire!" Emerald and Ruby both stood up and yelled at once.

"Where were you?" Ruby, yelled, followed up by Emerald with, "What have you bee doing all night?"

Sapphire plopped down in front of the love seat and shook his head violently, holding it in pain once he was done.

"Ohh… man…" Sapphire wheezed. "I just got done packing down seven mandarin Mai Tais at the hotel. I can't believe how tiny the place is, or how cheap the liquor they use. I'm telling you Lilo you'd never let the management get away with all the cutbacks their making, no ma'am you would not stand for it."

"Me?" Lilo asked too quietly, not expecting an explanation.

"Sapphire you're plastered!" Emerald yelled.

"Dang skippy, an I intend to stay that way."

"But why?" Ruby asked.

"'Cause we're all damned that's why!" Sapphire screamed at the top of his lungs. "There's no future left for us now! It's all gone! It's all gone… It's all gone."

The last reiteration brought Sapphire from giddiness to sobbing.

"Doomed?" Pleakly yelled back. "We're all doomed? There's no future left for us now? It's all gone? Waaaaa!"

At that moment Pleakly as well burst into a sobbing fit and fell over almost on top of Sapphire. Two two of them leaned against each other their fits, only one of them actually fully comprehending what he's doing.

"Pleakly!" Nani snapped.

Pleakly instantly quit sobbing and stood back up looking at Nani rather on fused, and certainly unapparent that he had just tantrummed.

"Sapphire, what are you talking about?" Nani demanded.

"It's all about non-interference." Sapphire sighed. "Our future depends on this present staying the course it originally did, without us involved. We had to stay out of events as much as possible. But now it's too late. We've interfered one too many times. Our future is gone.

"That's it! That's the end, Hamsterveil's won. In a few days, he'll get here in that giant cruiser of his and boil away all the planet's oceans. Every living thing on Earth will die, even you Stitch."

A silence went through the group, than a mutual murmur of all members. Only Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire had known exactly what failure in their task meant, up until now. Few of them at the moment had truly comprehended what had just been said. Of those who did, none of them believed it.

Lilo pushed herself off of David's lap and landed on the floor. She ran over to Sapphire and dropped to her knees, shaking him with her hands over his shoulders.

"What do you mean boil the oceans?" Lilo asked panic stricken.

"Exactly what I said."

"Be telling whole story! Leaving nothing out this time!" Jumba ordered, waving his hand through the air as an assertion of authority.

Sapphire took a deep breath. "The whole story… OK. It was fifteen years from now, Hamsterveil escaped from his prison. He tried to take over the Federation yet again, this time using clones of a bunch of different experiments from cell samples he gathered at his asteroid prison. He almost did it to. But we stopped him, Ruby, Emerald, and myself. After we beat him we sent Hamsterveil in a shuttle on a crash course to an abandoned desert asteroid. We thought he'd never escape, but somehow he did… four years later.  
"Hamsterveil stole one of Jumba's old theorems and used it to build a time machine. He went back and changed history so that we'd never be born. When he went back to the present, he found himself ruler of the Federation, so he took one last trip back to the past to destroy Earth, just to get rid of the place that caused him so much trouble before. The only way we weren't erased from history was by standing behind some kind of force field that Jumba and I built. So we went back to stop all that from happening… but now we can't. What happened yesterday… that just pushed history over the edge."

Sapphire pushed Lilo away and flopped down onto his side. He wept almost silently.

"Only one thing left to do now." Sapphire barely squeaked. "And that's have a good time… party until the end comes for us."

The silence came back. They were all less inclined to believe what sapphire said now than when he first spoke. Even so, a wave of morbidity swept through the room making the spines of each of its inhabitants tingle. The silence lasted longer than most that came between them.

What was just said put everyone into a shock, everyone except Stitch. He knew what they were saying was possible. After all, similar things have happened to him in the past. Now it seemed, at least according to what they said, that there was only a few days left for all of them to live. There was only a few days left to share his time with Lilo, there was only a few days left to lament over his lost Angel. There was only a few days left… and he would have to share all of them with the interlopers. The damn things from the future who looked like him, and even smelled bizarrely familiar would be right alongside him every moment of his last few days. All that time would be spent with them taking up what would otherwise be his time with Lilo, and his time to mourn in private. Stitch began to shake his head. He put his paws up to his ears. He didn't even notice the continuing conversation.

"How are you being so sure?" Jumba asked.

"'Cause I did the calculations!" Sapphire shouted back. "I factored in every variable and did the calculations! With as much as we've tampered with the present, the possibility of our future still being there is less than a thousandth of a percent! That's not even conceivable odds."

"His calculations are always right." Emerald added in.

"Naga!" Stitch jumped up and screamed. "Miga naga wanna spend last days with them!"

"But Stitch…" Ruby whimpered, and the turned toward Sapphire. "Can I tell Stitch about us and him?"

"It won't make a difference." Sapphire sniveled.

Ruby crawled over where Emerald sat and over to Stitch. Stitch made his usual scornful face at her. Ruby cleared her throat and paused. She turned her head and then turned back to Stitch. Even with her such simple way of looking at the world, she was unsure of how to say what she was going to.

"When we were little… you used to call us hibujikan."

"Gaba!"

Stitch was startled to no end by that revelation. Startled, at first, but then angered. With all those three have done to him over the past week, there's no way in hell he would ever call them anything that flattering.

"Naga!" Stitch pushed Ruby back. "Stitch Naga call You hibujikan!"

"But you did."

"What's hibujikan." Lilo suddenly asked.

"Is being plural," Jumba answered. "For bujikan, meaning precious polished stone."

"Like a gemstone?" Lilo whispered.

"You called us that the first time you held us in your arms." Ruby continued. "That's why you named us what you did."

"Naga!" Stitch screamed again. "Gabaga Stitch name you?"

Ruby huffed and walked a little but toward Stitch. She received a growl for he efforts but wasn't taken aback by it.

"You were right Jumba," Emerald added in. "When you said we weren't really experiments. We're not."

"You named us," Ruby finished. "because you're our father."

Everyone in the room gasped just a little at this news. Stitch gasped the hardest.

"Talk about your reverse Darth Vader syndrome." Lilo muttered under her breath.

Stitch took a step back and then fell down onto the couch cushion. This was very last thing he expected to hear, or wanted to for that matter. He shook his head a bit harder. All this time, these things that had invaded his life and his peace of mind were his own? It explained so many things. But at the same time it was something he couldn't take. He despised these creatures from the moment he first laid eyes upon them. Since they first came here, with their mild tempers and their fun-loving attitudes and their catering expertise had charmed his Lilo right away from him. With their constant nosing and search for attention they had pulled him away from his one truly deep time. More than anything though, they just shattered his family with their presence, turned it from something comfortable and predictable into chaos. Then they had the audacity to claim that they were family. But now that audacity was deserved, because they were. In fact they were Stitch's closest family, in some unknown future. Stitch clenched his fists and shut his eyes tight. He shook his head harder.

"NAGAA!" he cried as loud as possible. "Naga! Naga! Naga! Naga! Naga!"

Stitch shook his head even harder and then lashed out at ruby. He extended his hidden appendages, his arms, antennae and quills. He swiped ruby across the face and then hit her with all four arms. Ruby flew off the couch onto the kitchen floor. Stitch turned his rage toward emerald next. She didn't have the gut to fight back, at least not against a rage so unexpected. Stitch hit emerald across the side with both arms. She flew off the couch onto the floor.

"Stitch no!" Lilo screamed. She tried to race toward Stitch to stop him, but was restrained by David's two large hands.

Stitch leapt of the couch and bounded for the door. Sapphie tried to stand up and reach an arm toward him as he ran, only to be knocked down again by the jab of a shoulder.

Stitch hit the door with his head, breaking the knob and flinging it open.

With tears streaming down his face, Stitch climbed up the side of the apartment complex until he reached the roof. He climbed further until he stood on the tip of the roof and screamed into the sun.

"NAGAA!"

Stitch threw his body down and mashed his head into the roof, splitting the asphalt, the particle board beneath, and the support beam spanning the top.


	14. Chapter Fopurteen

Author note: the horizontal rule still is't working. I'm going to have to use dashes to seperate scenes.

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Only silence bathed the room after the blowup that just passed. What was just learned by all present was something that would take some time to even get a decent hold on to. What happened next made the entire situation even more confusing. Each person in the room tried to put some words as to what just happened, knowing no one else would be able to. No one could even know what they were supposed to feel then, except for the three so personally involved.

Nani blinked, paused, and blinked some more. This was the most confounding to her. To Nani, Stitch had been family since only weeks after his first arrival, and she loved him accordingly. But it wasn't until almost a year later that she truly learned to appreciate him, and it wasn't until a year after that when she finally learned to like him. But throughout it all, and even now, she never could accept that her life would never again bear any semblance of normalcy, and that it would be a futile waste of time to try to make it that way. How these aspirations were shattered by the sudden knowledge that in the future, Stitch would have children, was something Nani just couldn't put to words, try as she might. And she did try. Nani raised her hand, only her index finger extended, and opened her mouth slowly to talk. The only thing that came out was a soft squeak.

Nani's legs jittered. She fell back and landed with a grunt into the recliner behind her. Her head fell back behind the back cushion. She now stared straight at the ceiling. Nani reach up and pushed the fingertips on one hand against the side of her head as if trying to relieve a headache.

Pleakly fared no better from the news. His life was in judging what was right in front of his face. He was one who lived only in the here and now, never stopping to consider what might be happening in some other place, or what could transpire in some distant time. Maybe it was just him, or perhaps a primitive aspect of the species, but whenever Pleakly was forced to consider something far beyond the apparent, the immediately tangible and foreseeable, it would produce a psychological overload. Now Pleakly knew that in an indeterminate number of years his life and the lives of those around him would change fundamentally. Then hit another realization that was only what should happen. What was going to happen was that in an inditerminant number of days the planet he lived on was going to be reduced to a lifeless, waterless husk, and he would die, at least according to someone he'd never met until a few days ago. He tried to wrap his brain around the logic and implications behind these realizations. He could not. Instead he charged right into an incoherent panic.

Pleakly began to run in small circles around the spot where he stood. His arms flapped to and from in the air as he screamed incoherently.

"What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? We're all gonna die! We're gonna be burned and boiled! We're gonna be fried and baked!"

Without pausing for breath, Pleakly turned toward Sapphire, who was still trying to stand up, and pointed his finger at him.

"It's your fault! We're all gonna die because of someone who hasn't even been born yet!"

Again, without pausing for breath Pleakly turned back around and aimed his finger at Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand.

"No it's not it's your fault! Yes it's your fault! You made those theoremajigs in the first place! You did it! If it weren't for you we wouldn't all be about to be destroyed by a tiny evil rodent man from the future!"

Pleakly heaved over and hit his head against the floor as soon as he finished his last word. Still bent over he gasped for air.

Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand, stared out at Pleakly and huffed.

"Are you being done?"

Pleakly raised an arm with one finger extended, calling for time as he was still bent in half wheezing for air. With one last great breath, he stood back up.

"Yes." He answered.

Silence returned to the room.

Lilo turned her head about. She looked across the room at Sapphire, barely able to sit up straight and probably not fully comprehending the situation in his inebriation. She looked just behind her at Emerald, lobbed off the edge of the couch and now sitting on the floor. Her fists were clenched and all six of her tendrils were wrapped tightly around her arms. She pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. What exactly Emerald was trying to hold back was not clear, but it was anything but pleasant. She looked off to the side of Emerald at Ruby sitting up on the kitchen floor. All four of her hands were pressed against the floor and her head hung down. She was silent, but were there tears in her eyes? At this distance, and with Ruby's head turned down, she couldn't quite judge.

Out of everyone in the room Lilo was probably the one who could most keen fully understand what was going on and what it all meant. Among the disadvantages of being a child were more subtle advantages, mostly regarding not having to worry about nearly as much. At certain rare times, this quality would actually give a greater insight than an adult mind. It was certainly the case with Lilo now. She could deal matter-of-factly with the notion that Stitch would have children in the future, that they would come back to try to save the past from being destroyed, and would then ultimately fail, meaning there was not much time left within her own present. Still, how she might possibly express her feelings about this, or even what those feelings were, and how to respond was all beyond her grasp, as it would be for the others for a time to come.

Lilo looked down at her hands and twiddled her fingers, knowing nothing else to do.

"Um…" Lilo's voice was barely audible. "Do you… do you think Stitch? … I mean… Do you think we could… I mean… Do you think we could get Stitch to… not be so angry?"

Stitch, not so angry. Ruby heard those words and it was the last tiny push she needed. She let out a small sniffle, and in a few surprisingly long seconds she was crying softly.

Lilo crawled over to Ruby and put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. Ruby let her head fall into Lilo's arms and cried the tiniest bit harder.

Emerald made the first move of the siblings, causing almost a kind of cascade among them.

Emerald raised her fists fully intent on slamming them into the floor hard enough to plow them through to the lower level. She stopped herself just before bringing them down either out of consideration for the floor, or out of just not wanting to be seen losing control. Emerald took two deep breaths, relaxed and stood up. Her tendrils slowly uncoiled from her now numb arms, though she kept her eyes closed.

"The price of living, always on another's whim, gripped by madness."

Emerald opened her eyes and walked toward the door, paying attention to no one else as she passed. She never looked up when she reached up a tendril to twist the knob on the front door. They all watched, but no one said anything as she left and shut it behind her.

Lilo and Ruby both looked at the door. Ruby growled for only a second, regaining Lilo's attention before going back to crying, and after another second quitting entirely. Ruby pushed Lilo away and stood up to walk to the door herself. At the door she had to hop up to grip the handle, but managed to open the door.

"Where are you going?"

Ruby turned around and looked at Lilo. She couldn't very well leave without giving an answer to her of all people. Anyone else in the room maybe, but not to Lilo. Ruby looked down at the floor and bit at her lower lip.

"I don't know." Ruby answered. "I'll figure it out when I get there."

Ruby walked out the door.

It was now Sapphire's turn. One hand on the side of his head, he pushed the other against the wall to help prop himself up. He took only a few hobbles and reached out an arm to catch himself falling against the doorway.

"What about you?" Lilo asked Sapphire. "Where are you going?"

Sapphire groaned and pushed a fist against his chest.

"I'm going to sleep." He answered.

Sapphire went limp and collapsed into unconsciousness in the doorway.

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There were only a couple times before that she had seen this town, at least not it's current state. The only other times were when Lilo had offered them a tour, and when they accompanied her to find Kelvin yesterday. Ruby walked aimlessly alongside the road, making random turns at intersections and always turning back when she reached the town limits. She wandered for hours, though they seemed like only minutes to her. She was careful to hide her additional extremities as had been told to her countless times by both her siblings.

Kokaua was so different from what she knew, and even though she'd seen its present state twice before, she still couldn't quite wrap her finger around just how unfamiliar the place seemed.

She looked off to the side. Over a few shrubs and bamboo shoots she saw a small parking lot of a small grocery store, the only one in the town. It was the same grocery store she remembered, but things were different about it. The parking lot was a heap of gravel, while the cars and trucks parked within were mostly old and rusting. An old brick red VW bug, a tiny pickup with the paint peeled totally off its bed, a plain gray box of a Honda coupe, from way back before the Japanese had any sense of style in their cars. As she remembered the parking lot always looked like it was freshly paved and freshly painted. The only vehicles one would see there were limos, luxury cars, and rebuilt classics, all glimmering with paint jobs alone that cost more than most standard car. The ground between the sidewalk and the parking lot was filed with exquisitely arranged native and integrated flowers. It seemed like you could always see someone tending to them.

There was a nice novelty to what she saw now, but it didn't quite match the nostalgia of what she remembered. Frankly she was astounded at how her hometown could've ever been so low key.

Ruby kept walking.

She walked past the stunted Mrs. Hasagawa. Her little fresh produce stand wedged between two trinket shops seemed almost an insult to what would eventually spring from it. As far as Ruby knew, the only trinket shops in her Kokaua would be found at the Birds of Paradise hotel. These one's had been torn down and a landscaped meadow built in its place where the town's weekly farmer's market took place. Being allowed a stand there meant your products had to pass the strictest tests, and it meant great prestige for your farm or whatever else you would be selling.

Ruby kept walking.

She passed by many experiments, all of whom would look at her inquisitively, but none of whom would recognize her.

Whirring by came a small green upside down garbage can with crab claws. Ruby immediately recognized Ploot as he suched up wrappers and cigarette butts from the gutters. Ruby waved at him but found herself ignored. He whirred past and into a real garbage can, where he climbed up the sides and belched out the contents of his trash into the can.

Ruby kept walking.

She happened by a familiar sight, the only one in the town that looked identical to what she remembered. Parked on the side of the street, an old fashioned wooden cart with a thatched straw umbrella sticking out of a bamboo pole shaded two experiments, one in particular Ruby was quite familiar with.

Ruby smiled and ran up to the cart just as the last of a few children walked away with cones of shaved ice. Ruby jumped up on top of the cart and saw them waiting for her, Slushy and Dupe. Even though he couldn't talk, it was only dupe she was truly interested in. She knew anyway how good he was at gesturing, and she rarely misunderstood him.

"Dupe!" Ruby squealed as she suddenly grabbed and squeezed him.

Dupe growled and struggled to break free. Ruby was forced to release him as she realized this, then to be met with more growling as dupe crawled backwards with the hair in his back sticking straight up.

"_Who are you?_"

That screechy, squawky voice rang out in Ruby's right ear. She'd never before heard it speak Tantalog, but it there was no mistaking it. Ruby turned her head to see Slushy staring back at her quite indignant and irritated.

"Me? I'm…"

Ruby suddenly realized that explaining who she was, was now useless. They didn't know, nor did they care except maybe out of curiosity or formality. Ruby closed her eyes, lowered her head and sighed.

"_If you're not going to buy something than leave._" Slushy continued in his alien speech. "_We've got customers to take care of._"

Ruby slumped off of the cart and continued walking down the street. As she walked she could sense both Slushy and Dupe giving her vindictive stares.

Ruby continued walking.

She didn't know where she was going, but the route oddly seemed familiar. A right turn here, a left turn there, all seemed to make some kind of sense, even though very few of the sights around her she recognized. She walked always looking down, seeing withered pavement change to dirt, change to grass, change to gravel, and change all back again. The last change was something she didn't expect though. Withered pavement slowly became fresher and cleaner, with brighter paint, until she found the road splitting in two and reforming around a small garden.

Ruby looked up. She was standing right in the middle of a hotels Valet lane. The hotel had pink stucco walls and a thatched roof held up by bamboo columns shaded both the valet lane and the lobby beyond. Inside the lobby seemed to be a fusion of Arabian and Victorian styles. It was the ugliest thing. A Victorian, Arabian cross themed lobby beneath a thatched roof in Kauai was almost obscene. Whoever owned this hotel clearly had no sense of aesthetic.

She looked up a little further and saw a far more stylized version of the logo she was very familiar with. Two parrots, one pure blue, the other pure red, each standing on one leg, the other grasping the leg of the other parrot. They both looked forward after crossing each other, the red parrot looking out from over the blue parrot's shoulder. This logo sat next to a South Beach style cursive banner in hot pink declaring this to be the birds of Paradise hotel.

The banner was even uglier than the lobby. What's more there were no wild parrots in the Hawaiian Islands. It was all indicative of the owner's lack of knowledge and moreover lack of class. The owner of the Birds of Paradise hotel back when ruby was a little girl. His name was Fredrick Jameson. Ruby remembered how she would always laugh at listening to Nani complaining about that man. His name was Fredrick R Jameson.

"I don't know where the hell the guy finds such hideous shoes! They look like yellow and white bowling shoes, and he wears those things to work?"

"That royal suite looks like the inside of a wedding cake. This is supposed to be a place to relax, not go into seizures from too many swirly designs."

"He stuck a golf course right in the middle of a forest! Not counting the habitat issues, how does he expect to get customers there when there's no view?"

Ruby would always find those Nani's rants hilarious. But after seeing for herself only a mere taste of what Nani would have seen, they suddenly didn't seem very funny anymore.

It wasn't until after the hotel was renovated that she'd moved in there anyway, so she'd never been truly exposed to what was inside before then. Still, however unfamiliar, however tacky this place might be, she knew why her feet carried her here. In this world, the hotel was the only place she knew of where she might somehow feel even a little bit at home.

She walked inside.

People bustled about with luggage and file folders hoping to find there way to a room or to get one secured. Ruby's feet tapped on the floor with a different sound than she remembered. The marble was fake.

Most striking though, was that most people within the lobby were ignoring her. She stood in the middle of the crowd and a few had stopped to briefly pat her on the head and move one, but that was it. She thought she might feel somewhat at home here, but she was wrong.

Ruby looked out toward the center of the lobby. An ornate three tiered fountain stood there with its carvings and statues of trees and bushes and bamboo. It was the only thing there that Ruby knew remained untouched in her own Birds of Paradise hotel. Looking at it she could imagine herself in the home she remembered, always knowing what even strangers would do next.

_The lobby of the birds of Paradise hotel was fully enclosed now, though it never looked it from the glass walls. Only the insides had to be washed since the off and on rainstorms al year round regularly beat down on the outside. The ceiling above one's head was the traditional wrapped and glued bark. The columns too were wrapped in bark so what they were beneath wasn't really important. Not much of the center of the lobby was actual walking space. Genuine green marble walkways and small bridged noodled their way through a great garden filled with streams and rocks and flowers and bushes and grasses and trees and ponds with koi. All of it eventually drew back to the center to that very same fountain. The only difference in the fountain between now and then was that it was a bit more polished. That and there were lily pads in the tiers._

_Experiments came and went through the lobby just as casually as people, some of them getting allot more attention than others. Some like Felix, who now seemed to live in the lobby as he was never short of something to pick up and throw away from all the foot traffic, seemed to develop avoiding attention in the middle of a crowd into kind of an art form. Others weren't so lucky, and didn't have that kind of skill._

_The glass double doors were pushed open and a large red creature with four arms, two antennae, and three quills sticking out of her back walked inside. She held the door open for a few seconds waving to some unseen crowd before walking inside completely._

_"It's Ruby!"_

_That sound made her press her ears flat against her body and her antennae flat against the back of her head. She knew quite well what it was, and she had to deal with it every time she walked through that front door._

_No sooner did ruby get her head all the way turned around was she mobbed by a crowd of little children. They all tried to hug her or to shove papers and ink pads in her direction._

_Ruby huffed and got through it as best she could. She put on a fake smile and hugged of them in turn. Or she would press a single paw into an inkpad and make a paw print on the adjacent sheet of paper. The mob followed Ruby all the way to the front desk where the trails at last gave way to real wide walking space. From here she could push her way through the children and maker her way toward a plain sky blue swinging door marked 'employees only'. Once there she would be scott free._

_She made it inside just as the last of the papers were marked with her paw print. She leaned back against a filing cabinet just inside the door and sighed. She wiped her paw against her hip staining it with black ink. It took a special kind of soap, a mixture of dishwasher detergent, mechanic's hand soap, and powdered citric acid to get that stuff out._

_Ruby stood up and looked around. The lone buffet table in the small office was stacked on one end with half empty doughnut boxes and fully empty pizza boxes, and on the other end with paperwork, none of it in any particular order. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, many of them topped with intricate model pirate ships and Elizabethan mansions built out of actual twine and paper thin iron and wood and cloth and glass and paint and tiny hand carved bricks and things like that, all of them the legacy of her father._

_Speaking of which…_

_Ruby found the only gap in the walls' lining filing cabinets where two plain metal foldoud chairs stood. It was where customer service was parked after eleven PM and before seven AM. Now it was empty._

_Ruby climbed atop a chair and looked out through a window into the lobby she'd just been in. She saw in the distance the front doors opening again. This time it was Stitch who walked through._

_"It's Stitch!" The children shouted, and they all rushed to him wanting hugs and pawprints._

_Unlike Ruby, Stitch could not hide the discontent, and actively cringed and reached out toward something that wasn't there._

_Ruby laughed at this, but at the same time she couldn't help but feel empathetic._

Ruby sighed. All who ended up having to go through them, herself included, dreaded the mobbings. But now that they were gone, and Ruby found herself able to wander freely with little more than the occasional pleasent pat on the head, she found herself wanting them all back.

A single tear welled up in her left eye causing her to blink.

Maybe there were things here other than the fountain she was familiar with.

Ruby waited until no one was looking and dashed toward the wall on all sixes. Hitting the wall did nothing to impair her movement; she only made a ninety degree change in her direction. She ran straight up the wall and stopped just short of the ceiling. Always avoiding sight, she snuck into the nearest hallway looking for something else within that she might recognize.

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Ruby had wandered endlessly across the ceiling of corridors with doors every ten to fifteen feet. It seemed an endless looping maze of nothing but light tan, sky blue and sea green art deco. It was a grand monument to the ordinary.

It must've already been well past sunset. The lights in the halls had been dimmed for some time. Ruby paid no attention to the time, to the scenery, or even to where she was going. Her mind was a blank. She stared unfocused at nothing, letting her paws take her wherever they for her to go. She was only half aware that she was even still moving. It was certainly no concern of hers as she entered a hall she hadn't been in before, and pushed a flapping sign out of her way labeled "private suites".

This area was much shorter than the last, only a few halls with a couple turns. On her way through ruby slowed down and sniffed the air. There was something familiar here. Something familiar… Ruby was brought back to the realization of why she was wandering in the first place, to find something familiar.

Ruby dropped from the ceiling. Flipping over in midair she landed on her feet and only now realized just how much her wrists and ankles hurt, but that didn't matter at the moment. She sniffed again, the sent led her a few feet back and to the side, to a door that was open only a couple inches with light pouring out of the crack. She sniffed at the crack in the door. The scent was strong enough here for her to put her finger on just what it was she was remembering.

"Keoni?"

Ruby opened the door to a room that consisted of a mini kitchen behind a small living room, with a door on one wall of the living room. All the lights in the room were on and the sliding glass door at the end of the living room was open, leading to a balcony overlooking the beach. Other than that much there was little more than a couch, a chair, a coffee table, and a TV stand. There were also clothes thrown just about everywhere giving one a limited view of the floor.

Ruby walked forward a little more, past the kitchen, and twitched her ear to some kind of scraping to her right.

She turned her head. Keoni sat on a barstool in khaki shorts, socks, and a plain white undershirt scribbling on a stack of notebook paper set on the countertop. Books, three different types of calculators, and a laptop all surrounded him on the countertop.

Keoni stopped scrawling and looked down to his side, clearly aware of some presence.

"Hey there." Keoni whispered.

He stepped down onto the floor and kneeled over Ruby, placing one hand on her head. Ruby didn't respond but to keep staring at him. She wasn't sure of much of anything at the moment. Smelling someone she knew, but seeing him a foot shorter than she remembered certainly didn't help it.

"How'd you get in here?" Keoni continued. "Man you're a funny lookin', whatever you are. Hey you look like… you look allot like Lilo's dog!"

"Well there's a good reason for that." Ruby answered, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Keoni had never before seen something so out of the ordinary.

Keoni nodded his head for a second and opened his mouth about to answer when he suddenly became aware of what was wrong with what just happened. He paused still and silent for a few seconds and then jerked his arm back from Ruby's head. He stood up and took several steps back. Ruby stepped forward keeping the distance between them constant. Keoni backed himself up into the wall and slid down until he was sitting. He reached his arm straight out forward with his palm flat open. He stared right into ruby's eyes, his own eyes pulled as wide open as they could be.

"What are you?" Keoni wheezed.

The words brought Ruby now completely out of the trance she had still slightly been in only moments ago. She was trapped twenty years in the past, five years before her own birth. No one knew who she was, and few people even knew of the true nature of the experiments.

She started to cry.

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Keoni didn't know what else to do given the circumstances, so he just kept doing what he was doing. A bright crimson talking animal of some sort was clinging to his shirt and pressing its head into his chest, sobbing away and talking on about something having something to do with time travel and an apocalypse of some kind. He shut his eyes and held onto the animal as tightly as he could and tried not to listen.

"I'm gonna die in this world!" Ruby bawled into Keoni's chest. "And my family doesn't even know who I am! They hate me! Why do they have to hate me?"

Those were the last of the words as the sobs took over, and in a few minutes even those died down.

Keoni looked down at the bizarre animal, now apparently asleep. It twitched its hand and ear. He let go and it softly rolled off of him onto the floor, quickly curling up.

Keoni stood up, he looked down at his now soaked shirt for only a moment before looking back up and heading toward the door in the living room. It led to the bedroom, it with just a bed, a dresser, a couple end tables, and just as much clothes thrown about on the floor. He turned and headed into an adjascent door into the bathroom, littered only with a few pairs of underwear and towels. He flicked on the light and reached forward behind the mirror. It opened into a cabinet filled with little bottles. After popping a small handful of headache medicine Keoni put his head under the sink and turned it on cold. The freezing water felt anything but pleasant flowing over his air and face.

Keoni brought his head back up and shut the cabinet. He never bothered to dry off his head. Cold water dripping from all points of his face, Keoni looked at himself in the mirror.

"You've had too many iced mint mochas Keoni." He said to his reflection. "You've only slept five hours in four days. Just put away your homework and get a good nights sleep, it'll be gone in the morning."

Keoni looked to his side, and dirty cell phone sat on the counter half covered by a video game magazine. He grabbed it, opened it and pressed just a few buttons. He stood tapping his foot against the ground with the phone to his ear several seconds before…

"Dad?… yeah it's me… … Listen, I need to go to the doctor's… as soon as I can… … Well I'd rather tell him that… … … Ok, bye."

Keoni flipped the cell phone shut and dropped it onto the floor. He turned around, but the instant his eyes came into focus, he saw a massive gray, four fingered fist heading toward his face. That was the last moment he stood conscious.

Ruby slept restlessly on the floor in the dirty living room. Sometimes she snorted. Sometimes she jerked her body in one direction and then back a few moments later. Sometimes she whimpered in her sleep.

Two furry pink nubs poked at Ruby's nose. She batted them away in her sleep and was none more aware. The poking continued. Ruby fluttered her eyes open and wiped away a bead of saliva that had fallen from the side of her mouth. In front of her Ruby saw only a pink blur. But she soon gained focus. Standing in front of her was a very familiar experiment to her indeed. It was a pink experiment, slender, and with two prehensile antennae spanning twice the length of her body.

"M… mu… mom?" Ruby whispered.

"That's right." Angel answered. "It's me."

Ruby sat up straight, not yet fully lucid. Her sight was still a bit dreamlike, especially with what she saw.

"I've come back to the past to take you away." Angel continued. "I've come to take you home."

Ruby stared transfixed at angel, not noticing a slight yellow glow from just behind the chair.

"Yes!" Ruby squeaked. "I wanna' go home!… no. No it can't be. But Jumba said you died."

Angel stepped closer to Ruby. She touched the tip of her antennae to Ruby's, grabbed her upper hands, and pressed her nose against Ruby's own. The glowing from behind the couch became brighter, but Ruby still didn't notice, still transfixed on Angel.

"I'm alive Ruby." Angel implored. "If I wasn't, how could I be touching you."

"You… yes." Ruby answered. "No!"

Ruby pulled her nose away from Angel's.

"You're not my mother." Ruby whispered.

"You're right. I'm not your mother."

A flash of light blinded Ruby and she found herself wrapped up in three glowing white rope ending in faces looking like a cross between Chinese dragon and a Chihuahua. It was Sparky. It was three Sparkies. They surged power through Ruby's body. Ruby felt as if she was burning on fire from the inside out. Her body stiffened, her muscles tightened till they were as solid as wood. The Sparkies surged her body even harder. Ruby was completely numb, she could only see white, and then black.

The Sparkies untwined from around Ruby and their bodies solidified back into their normal states. Their glowing dimmed revealing their fur to be a dull gray. Kixx walked into the living room from the bedroom, he to a dull gray.

Angel closed her eyes. Her fur ruffled. It too began to loose color until se turned monochrome.

She opened her eyes and looked over the other replicas.

"Let's get this one back to the ship."


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Author Notes:** I am truly sorry about having to make you all wait so long for my next update. But what happened was that I went green bean picking at a U-Pick farm, which involves thre hours of bending over and standingup about twenty times a minute. I gave my self sciatica doing it, which is pain of the nerve running from the bottom of the back down the side of the leg to the ankle. So a single pulled muscle over the base of the scietic nerve will cause throbbing pain from the lower back, all the way down the leg. Thing is, sitting upright aggrivates it. So that ruled out sitting at my desk for a month. No sitting at desk no computer no writing nofanfic updates.

**Story Notes:** The beginning of this chapter covers the same events in the beginning of the last chapter. Indeed this chapter actually covers the same day as last, only from the perspective of Emerald rather than Ruby.

**To My Readers:** I would like to ask... Why do authors write what they write? For the most part its because they want recognition for their writings. I believe in the case of fanfiction dot net (the site automatically deleates URLs in the stories) I believe it's because they want feedback. Feedback of course means reviews. Allot of you, especially those of you who have favorited this story, seem to think that just reading it is enough for me. I want to hear from you! I want to know what you think of my story! And even if you're going to say something negative, especially if your going to say something negative, I want to know what you think of my story. Thing is... I want to feel connected to you, rather than you reading my stuff but keeping your distance.

* * *

Only silence bathed the room after the blowup that just passed. What was just learned by all present was something that would take some time to even get a decent hold on to. What happened next made the entire situation even more confusing. Each person in the room tried to put some words as to what just happened, knowing no one else would be able to. No one could even know what they were supposed to feel then, except for the three so personally involved. 

Nani blinked, paused, and blinked some more. This was the most confounding to her. To Nani, Stitch had been family since only weeks after his first arrival, and she loved him accordingly. But it wasn't until almost a year later that she truly learned to appreciate him, and it wasn't until a year after that when she finally learned to like him. But throughout it all, and even now, she never could accept that her life would never again bear any semblance of normalcy, and that it would be a futile waste of time to try to make it that way. How these aspirations were shattered by the sudden knowledge that in the future, Stitch would have children, was something Nani just couldn't put to words, try as she might. And she did try. Nani raised her hand, with only her index finger extended, and opened her mouth slowly to talk. The only thing that came out was a soft squeak.

Nani's legs jittered. She fell back and landed with a grunt into the recliner behind her. Her head fell back behind the back cushion. She now stared straight at the ceiling. Nani reach up and pushed the fingertips on one hand against the side of her head as if trying to relieve a headache.

Pleakly fared no better from the news. His life was in judging what was right in front of his face. He was one who lived only in the here and now, never stopping to consider what might be happening in some other place, or what could transpire in some distant time. Maybe it was just him, or perhaps a primitive aspect of the species, but whenever Pleakly was forced to consider something far beyond the apparent, the immediately tangible and foreseeable, it would produce a psychological overload. Now Pleakly knew that in an indeterminate number of years his life and the lives of those around him would change fundamentally. Then hit another realization that was only what should happen. What was going to happen was that in an indeterminate number of days the planet he lived on was going to be reduced to a lifeless, waterless husk, and he would die, at least according to someone he'd never met until a few days ago. He tried to wrap his brain around the logic and implications behind these realizations. He could not. Instead he charged right into an incoherent panic.

Pleakly began to run in small circles around the spot where he stood. His arms flapped to and from in the air as he screamed incoherently.

"What are we gonna do!? What are we gonna do!? What are we gonna do!? We're all gonna die! We're gonna be burned and boiled! We're gonna be fried and baked!"

Without pausing for breath, Pleakly turned toward Sapphire, who was still trying to stand up, and pointed his finger at him.

"It's your fault! We're all gonna die because of someone who hasn't even been born yet!"

Again, without pausing for breath Pleakly turned back around and aimed his finger at Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand.

"No it's not it's your fault! Yes it's your fault! You made those theoremajigs in the first place! You did it! If it weren't for you we wouldn't all be about to be destroyed by a tiny evil rodent man from the future!"

Pleakly heaved over and hit his head against the floor as soon as he finished his last word. Still bent over he gasped for air.

Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand, stared out at Pleakly and huffed.

"Are you being done?"

Pleakly raised an arm with one finger extended, calling for time as he was still bent in half wheezing for air. With one last great breath, he stood back up.

"Yes." He answered.

Silence returned to the room.

Lilo turned her head about. She looked across the room at Sapphire, barely able to sit up straight and probably not fully comprehending the situation in his inebriation. She looked just behind her at Emerald, lobbed off the edge of the couch and now sitting on the floor. Her fists were clenched and all six of her tendrils were wrapped tightly around her arms. She pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. What exactly Emerald was trying to hold back was not clear, but it was anything but pleasant. She looked off to the side of Emerald at Ruby sitting up on the kitchen floor. All four of her hands were pressed against the floor and her head hung down. She was silent, but there were tears in her eyes? At this distance, and with Ruby's head turned down, she couldn't quite judge.

Out of everyone in the room Lilo was probably the one who could most keen fully understand what was going on and what it all meant. Among the disadvantages of being a child were more subtle advantages, mostly regarding not having to worry about nearly as much. At certain rare times, this quality would actually give a greater insight than an adult mind. It was certainly the case with Lilo now. She could deal matter-of-factly with the notion that Stitch would have children in the future, that they would come back to try to save the past from being destroyed, and would then ultimately fail, meaning there was not much time left within her own present. Still, how she might possibly express her feelings about this, or even what those feelings were, and how to respond was all beyond her grasp, as it would be for the others for a time to come.

Lilo looked down at her hands and twiddled her fingers, knowing nothing else to do.

"Um…" Lilo's voice was barely audible. "Do you… do you think Stitch? … I mean… Do you think we could… I mean… Do you think we could get Stitch to… not be so angry?"

Stitch, not so angry. Ruby heard those words and it was the last tiny push she needed. She let out a small sniffle, and in a few surprisingly long seconds she was crying softly.

Lilo crawled over to Ruby and put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. Ruby let her head fall into Lilo's arms and cried the tiniest bit harder.

Emerald made the first move of the siblings, causing almost a kind of cascade among them.

Emerald raised her fists fully intent on slamming them into the floor hard enough to plow them through to the lower level. She stopped herself just before bringing them down either out of consideration for the floor, or out of just not wanting to be seen losing control. Emerald took two deep breaths, relaxed and stood up. Her tendrils slowly uncoiled from her now numb arms, though she kept her eyes closed.

"The price of living, always on another's whim, gripped by madness."

Emerald opened her eyes and walked toward the door, paying attention to no one else as she passed. She never looked up when she reached up a tendril to twist the knob on the front door. They all watched, but no one said anything as she left and shut it behind her.

Emerald looked up into the sky. It was only noon. Clouds were few… at least for today. On Kauai the whether was nothing if not unpredictable. It would be cloudless and still one day and downpour thunderstorm with gale force wind the next. Emerald thought deeply, not about what had just happened, but about the whether, and that of course leading to nature in general. Given the sheer randomness of the whether, it's daily variations from one extreme to the other it was amazing anything at all grew on Kauai. Yet forests ran most of the way up Mount Waieleale. The eastern lowland of the island was a forever green grassland. West of Waimea was quite possibly the only march that existed on a mountain. Waimea itself was certainly one of the only canyons encompassing its own rainforest. All of that would be gone in some odd days.

But at leas the nature had a chance to exist at all. What of the things that will never be? The discovery at the birds of Paradise hotel was considered the greatest turning point in history since the World War II. The hotel itself became known as the eight wonder of the world, and after the skirmished were over, it was what catapulted Hawaii from the state with the highest rate of unemployment and homelessness, into the financial and political hub of the world, where anyone who could organize a filing cabinet could get a sixty grand a year job trying to manage the overflow of paperwork.

From the time she was a young girl Emerald grew up around opulence. Gold, marble, nice suits, and world class food and landscaping were all so commonplace that they were almost ignored. The Hawaii of the past clashed so hard with the Hawaii she remembered. That Hawaii would never exist, and this even this one wouldn't exist for long.

Emerald stared up at the sky with her eyes half closed and her lips in a droll, expressionless frown. She didn't even realize that she was walking down the stairs to the sidewalk below. She wandered a bit more, scarcely aware of her own movements, continuing to stare up at the sky.

Emerald blinked, only then noticing how dry her eyes became. She shook her head looked around to find herself at a small tree just between the parking lot and the street. Down the street she saw her sister in the distance disappearing over the hill. It would be best not to bother her. Back toward the apartment complex, she saw her would be father still sitting up on the roof. He stared at her for a few seconds and quickly turned his head away after realizing she was looking back.

Emerald looked down at the pavement, spun on her feet an unknown number of degrees, and started walking, determined to somewhere both random and unknown. She passed striped pavement to plain pavement. She hopped up on a sidewalk and passed that onto some neatly cut grass. The grass slowly became more erratic until it was almost up to her neck and was dotted with the occasional small shrub or tree.

A rustling in the grass wasn't from her and Emerald at last lifted up her head.

Who else would she find tiptoeing through the grass, still not aware of her presence only a few yards away from her than the newly captured experiment Kelvin, apparently now trying to escape.

"Hrrggmm!" Emerald coughed.

Kelvin froze in place with one leg still above the ground in front of him. His ears flattened against his head. His head slowly turned around to find Emerald giving him a slightly disapproving look.

A barely audible gasp escaped Kelvin's mouth. His feet scrambled in several directions at once and he almost tripped over himself righting his direction toward her. She took a step toward him, and he took a step back. He still remembered how easily she had beaten him. She seemed to know his weakness as if by instinct alone. Her strength was clearly many, many times his. And the weapons at her disposal could only be described as vicious. Why she seemed to have both a strange interest in, and distaste for him was something he simply didn't want to know.

Emerald took one more step forward. Kelvin took another step back and grunted as he tripped over an imaginary branch and fell down. He still tried to scoot away from her as she walked equally slowly toward him.

Why was she doing this? To those who were clearly afraid of her she had always tried to come off as harmless and hospitable, to make them more comfortable around her. Now to this creature, who seemed to be terrified of her very presence, she was actively antagonizing him, exasperating his fear. This behavior was scurrilous, almost vulgar. Or at least to her it was. It was the opposite of everything she'd ever tried to be. She hated herself for willfully frightening someone so helpless, but she could not stop herself.

Emerald quickened her pace to close the gap between herself and Kelvin. She didn't need to, as he backed himself right into a tree. Now standing above him, Ruby lowered her head to meet his and stared at him with a smirk. He breath was short and rapid, and he was almost shaking at he.

Emerald felt sick for this behavior, but at the same time it sent a kind of warmth up her spine and through to the bulbous tips of her tendrils.

Years of memories shared between Emerald and Kelvin flooded into Emerald's brain, memories the Kelvin before her would not have. She realized in his state that he would be willing to do practically anything she asked of him. Her stomach cringed at the prospect, but her heart fluttered at it. She of course would sooner tear the eyes out of her face and the tendrils out of her body before harming Kelvin, but he of course didn't know that, and that's what she counted on.

She lifted her head back up.

"What do you think you're doing?" Emerald asked in a rather scornful tone.

"Gaba?" was all she got in response.

In a flash Emerald realized that the Kelvin of this time could only speak Tantalog. She tried again.

"_What are you doing here?_" She demanded.

"_I…I… I was just trying to…_"

"_You were trying to sneak away from us weren't you?_" Emerald interrupted. "_You know I ordered you not to didn't I?_"

Kelvin really was shaking at this point. "_I just wanted to…_"

"_Hide?_" Emerald interrupted again. "_You know, whenever I want to hide from society in general, I know a particular little house that always serves my purpose. We should go there. Wouldn't you agree?_"

Kelvin nodded, knowing nothing else to do.

"_I thought so._" Emerald finished.

* * *

The knob creaked and twisted and door with the peeling sky blue paint slowly slid open. The house they were all supposed to stay away from was the very one Emerald had led Kelvin to, the house belonging to Nani Pelekai. 

A reach of a tendril flipped the light switches on and the living room and kitchen were illuminated. She took a few steps forward and Kelvin followed inside hesitantly, grasping his hands together. The same tendril shut the door a bit quickly, causing Kelvin to jump and turn his head at the sound. The tendril retracted back to its normal length.

Emerald walked forward a bit and turned toward Kelvin, making him shuffle his feet nervously.

"_You want a drink?_" She asked. "_I'm going to get myself one._"

No knowing what to do, Kelvin again nodded his head.

Some time passed.

Emerald and Kelvin sat on the couch watching some TV drama about exceedingly good looking forensic scientists solving murders and spouting cheesy one liners in downtown Las Angeles. Though the forensic science used was technically accurate, the speed at which they got results from it was absurdly unrealistic, in most cases instantaneous. The volume was turned down though, and neither Emerald or Kelvin paid much attention.

Emerald stared at him. He was considerably more relaxed now, though still seemed a bit weary whenever he looked at her. The memories between her and him came back, and now it seemed those memories were meaningless, as they were based on events that would never happen.

Emerald shed a single tear and grit her teeth together. She crunched up her can and threw it at the TV, squarely hitting the power button and turning it off. Kelvin jumped and yelped at the sudden display. His previous anxiety it seemed had returned.

"_You know,_" Emerald exclaimed. "_I've always been the one looked to, to solve problems._"

Emerald's voice was monotone, though hiding a certain irritability.

"_I could solve almost any problem." _She continued. _" I could solve them because I always knew what other people were feeling. I decided long ago to push that talent to its limit._"

Emerald's voice became slightly more somber as she progressed.

"_To that effect, I worked my whole life to become the standard of political correctness. And I got good at it… I got so good at it that I did it all the time without realizing it. I've worked for years to become what I am today._"

Emerald's eyes started to water.

"_You know what that is Kelvin? You know what I am today? I'm as close to perfect as it comes that's what. I'm the perfect lady, the perfect hostess. I'm the model of etiquette and protocol that all the other so called experts try to imitate._"

At this point Emerald was beginning to sound definitely angry. Her tendrils pressed flat against her body and her fists were clenched.

"_And when I became what I was, I was turned into an Icon for it. I remember myself mediating arguments between the state and the sovereignty movement, between the military and the unions, even between the churches and the Federation. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a debate between religious zealots and aliens civil, especially for someone the zealots all considered an alien? Everyone said it was impossible but I did it! Not that those negotiations ever went anywhere but I kept them from getting violent and everyone said even that couldn't be done!_"

Now Emerald's voice was raised, She was almost growling her words. She was beating the couch cushion with her left hand while tearing it with her right.

"_I was the apex of politeness, of civility, of objectiveness, of properness, of cool headedness, and a whole crap load of other things!_"

Now Emerald screamed.

"_What the hell's it all worth now huh? Crap I tell you! That's what it's all worth!_"

Only at the end of her rant did Emerald give herself the chance to realize what she'd just done. She'd lost it. She'd lost her cool before, but never like this. She had just expressed rage and contempt, and she did so as hard as she could. She just let loose the side of herself that she'd never wanted any hint of being shown. And she did it all in front of Kelvin no less. Not even to him did she ever show who she truly was, how vulgar she truly was. And now she just did. Emerald let go of the couch. Her tendrils relaxed and fell down limp. She covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed openly.

A minute went by. Emerald calmed and looked to her side. Kelvin cowered in the corner of the couch. She snorted a half sincere laugh. Normally when she gave the hints of being upset he would be next to her holding her arm.

At that moment something happened to her inside. Emerald felt heat rushing into her chest, through her lungs. The fur on the back of her neck and down her back stood on end. Her heart beat faster and her breath sped up to match. This tips of her fingers and tendrils tingled, and her limbs felt restless.

At that moment, for that moment, Emerald forgot all about her mask of perfect politeness. Her reputation no longer mattered. She didn't care about being in complete control of the situation and of herself. She didn't care about etiquette or protocol. She didn't care about anything anymore, except what she wanted. And right then and there moment she wanted Kelvin.

Emerald glared at Kelvin with the face of starving person staring at a prime rib. Her mouth watered to match the expression. She dropped to all fours and slinked over and on top of Kelvin like a cat. Her tendrils stuck almost straight up in the air. Kelvin stood motionless staring up at her, unsure of himself or much of anything for that matter. What happened was the last thing he expected.

Emerald threw her lips onto his. It wasn't slow or gentle. It was quick and hard. She did it as if she was bloodthirsty. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him toward her, and then pressed against her. Her hands ran up and down Kelvin's back and shoulders in a frenzy, her fingers kneading into his flesh almost painfully. Her legs stroked madly against his hips as if she were trying to climb him, even knowing she wouldn't get anywhere.

Kelvin was stunned into shock. Every muscle in his body was clenched tight and he was stiff as a board. He couldn't even try to work himself out of the stupor Emerald's sudden actions had put him into. His own tongue was motionless in his mouth while hers had long since forced itself inside his mouth and was now wrapping and rewrapping itself around his own.

Emerald's hands acted of their own accord, almost independently of her thoughts. They climbed their way up Kelvin's back, up his shoulders, up his neck, and up to his head. The hands ran their way down the back of his head and down his neck, and the bringing themselves back up to his head to begin again. One hand after another of Emerald's pressed its way down Kelvin's head and neck while her tongue continued thrashing about with his own. Kelvin was just beginning to relax a bit more, but was still in too much shock to move.

Emerald thought for a moment, still clinging to and writhing on Kelvin, about their relationship in her own present. It had always bothered her that he was eight years older than she was. Though now it seems she had turned the tables and was now eleven years older than him. This fact, strangely, didn't at all seem to bother her, at least not at the time. She laughed aloud, or at least made as much an attempt as possible while her tongue was still inside Kelvin's mouth.

She wanted more than this, and she knew how to get it. If this Kelvin was anything like the one she knew, than she would know exactly what he liked. Hopefully he would be able to deduce the same of her.

Emerald released Kelvin's lips, though her tongue still showed. It dragged its way up the outer surface of Kelvin's moist nose and back down again, and then back up. Emerald planted her lips on the tip of Kelvin's nose and began lightly sucking, still swirling her tongue around its surface where it could break through her lips.

It seemed to work. Kelvin relaxed almost all the way in a few seconds. Though his hands still clung to the couch cushion, he was still to afraid to do anything back, but perhaps she could use that fear to her advantage. She released the tip of his nose from her lips just long enough to give him a single command in a stern, authoritative voice.

"Don't you dare hold out on me."

Kelvin yelped at the command. Almost immediately his hands leg go of the couch cushion and grabbed hold of Emerald's hips. Emerald smirked and sighed with her mouth shut. She put her lips back on the tip of Kelvin's nose and continued her suckling. Kelvin's hands started to rub her hips, softly at first though harder when he heard her growl. She growled again and Kelvin dug even harder deeper into Emerald's skin, as if he was trying to rip her open. But no amount of force he applied to her seemed to do any harm. He could not understand it as he was designed to be able to lift over two tons. But a soft moan eliciting from Emerald told him she approved of his newest grip. Kelvin continued grinding his hands into Emerald's hips as his courage slowly built. He reached around and grabbed the knob of her tail, squeezing and massaging it just as hard.

Another moan from Emerald told Kelvin once again of her approval, and her hands caressed their way downward onto his chest, rubbing back and fourth.

Kelvin pulled his head to the side forcing Emerald's lips off his nose. If this girl was really as she seemed, than she may be very unkind if he did not make up for his previous lack of action right now.

Kelvin turned his head back to Emerald and planted his own lips on hers. Emerald instantly responded by shoving her tongue into his mouth. This time, Kelvin returned the gesture. Their tongues wrapped and swirled around each other like two corkscrews, and Emerald made sure his own would not let go for the next five minutes at the very least. In the midst of the moment, Kelvin grabbed hold of the two tendrils protruding from Emerald's upper back and pulled on them as hard as he could. Emerald did not respond except to wrap the remaining length sticking out from his fingers around his hands and wrists and squeeze gently. She clearly did not seem to be hurt by it.

Emerald thought again to their relationship in her own present. Kelvin had always been hesitant to do that thinking he may hurt her. His lack of hesitation now spelled out to her that he was indeed at least a bit different than he would be twenty years from now. But right now she didn't care.

After how long neither of them knew, Emerald allowed Kelvin a rest from kissing. She glared down at him with a hungry smile, with saliva dripping from the tips of her teeth. For once, it didn't seem to frighten Kelvin, who gazed back slightly confused and slightly curious. The tendrils of Emerald's upper back were still wrapped around Kelvin's hands and wrists, though both her tendrils and his arms were relaxed at this point, neither trying to restrain the other. Emerald did take notice of this. Her smile widened and her eyes narrowed both just a bit.

The tendrils from Emerald's forehead draped over her back, but lifted themselves up to dangle in front of Kelvin's face. They dropped forward more and began rhythmically rubbing the front of his neck. Kelvin closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation only for a few moments before opening them again and remembering her earlier command, don't hold out. His hand, still wrapped in their own tendrils, reached up to grasp the ones in front of him. He pulled their bulbous toward his lips suckled on their ends.

A shiver ran up Emerald's spine. He couldn't possibly have known to do what he was doing now. No, he must've just thought it up at random. There's no possibly way he could've known that the tips of her tendrils contained almost three times the nerve endings of even her lips. She sat up on his chest while arching her back up and leaning her head down and gritting her teeth together.

Kelvin imagined an experiment that would either have him praised or have him killed. He decided to go with it. His left eye glowed bright blue while his right eye glowed bright red. Emerald suddenly felt waves of intense heat and cold rippling through the two tendrils from the tip to the base. The waves came several times a second. Emerald groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. The tendrils around Kelvin's hands tightened their grip and pulled them toward her. He couldn't resist it, her strength being so much greater than his own. She was giving him her a clear message as to what she thought of it. Kelvin would always do this for her in her own present. It was one of the most intense of feelings and one of her favorite, and in her present he knew what it did for her. How he knew or even thought to do this now was beyond her, but at the moment she didn't care.

Kelvin thought for a moment while sending his extremes of temperature waving through Emerald's tendrils. He had to know something. He let go of her tendrils for a moment, bringing out a dirty look in her. That caused a lump to form in his throat, which he tried to swallow before asking.

"_How far do you want to take this?_"

"_As far as I possibly can._" Was her answer.

They continued with this, and with much, much more until exhaustion finally took them both.

* * *

Emerald's eyelids flicker. A few of her muscles twitch. She stretches out one arm and then relaxes again. In a state of semi consciousness she is aware of her situation, and tries desperately to wake up. But her body is still asleep, and only responds to her commands with the slightest of movements. 

A few more minutes passed and Emerald made another attempt. Her body wriggled a bit more. She was able to lift her arm up into the air a few inches before setting it back down. Her eyelids flickered again, and one eye opened. Success, she was now fully conscious, albeit disorientated.

Only now did Emerald realize the condition of her body. Her legs and arms were a bit sore. Her fur was utterly disheveled, and her mouth was dry as sand. Emerald yawned hoping to gain a bit more alertness. It seemed to work. She opened both her eyes.

She was staring down at Kelvin apparently resting peacefully on his back laying up against her, his head resting on her stomach. What possessed her to do what she did? What would she think of herself after she's had enough time to fully comprehend it? In her current state she could only think of things matter-of-factly.

Emerald rolled her head from side to side gaining enough clarity to truly comprehend her surroundings. It was night out. What time it was exactly couldn't be told. It could've been anywhere from ten at night to four in the morning. She rolled her head to look out the window across from the couch. For a moment she thought she saw a silhouette walking about the darkness. In the dark she could scarcely see. But through the window her eyes could see all the way into the horizon from the starlight alone, a very fortunate inheritance that only she had. Clouds were rolling in from a great distance. By the look of them the storm was going to be massive and thunderous, the kind that closes down all the shops and rips tiles off roofs. But it was very far away. I would take the storm at least three days to reach Kauai.

Emerald sat up, forcing Kelvin to push off to he side and lay his head on the couch directly. He groaned in his sleep. Emerald pushed herself off the couch intent on making it to the fridge for another soda or maybe a pass-o-guava or something.

Then there were whispers. Emerald stopped. Her ears perked up. A voice called out to her, speaking not in Tantalog but in English. This was a voice she was very familiar with, but did not know who to attribute it to.

"Well, well, well, Emerald the slut. I always knew that word perfectly described your sister, but you? I never imagined."

Emerald froze stiff in place. Adrenalin shot through her veins suddenly bringing her clarity to its peak. Her fingers and toes suddenly felt like ice. Emerald turned around slowly making out the silhouette of a female figure very similar to her own. It was Angel.

"Mom?" Emerald squeaked at first, but her face grew stern after. "No! You're a clone!"

"Correct again." The Angel responded.

Emerald sniffed barely.

"More of them!" Emerald shouted.

Before she could react, two great weights fell on top of her. Giant fists began pounding her from every direction. They hit with the force of bullets, expanded to a foot's diameter. Less than a minute of this and Emerald would be badly bruised. Ten minutes and bones would start to crack. The fist knocked most of the sense out of her but she could still understand that much. She extended all of her tendrils and wrapped them around whatever extremity she could. She lifted them up into the air.

Emerald saw blurry doubles fading in and out of each other but even still she could make out the silhouettes of Kixx, three of them, all in the air. She tightened the grip of her tendrils around the, finally snapping the extremities, Three arms, two legs, one neck. She threw the Kixx out the window, breaking it, and ensuring they land at least half a mile away. She turned her head toward the mockery of her mother, but then felt as if she had been rammed in the back with a white hot steel pillar. She flew across the room, landing on the wall cracking it. Despite the pain, Emerald quickly righted herself to see three more silhouettes in the kitchen way, all of Splodyhead, the center one with its giant nostril smoking.

She couldn't take on all of them at once, the only way was to kill their leader. She whipped out all six of her tendrils toward the familiar silhouette. But bunched together, they were all grabbed by a single flash of light, a glowing pure white likeness of Sparky. It glowed bright enough to blind Emerald. Searing pulses of electricity were sent through Emerald's tendrils into her body, paralyzing her. The glowing stopped and Emerald dropped to the ground seeing nothing but a swirl of color quickly fading back into the darkened room. She crawled forward not knowing where she was going.

"Kelvin!" She cried out.

"I'm afraid he's indisposed at the moment."

Vision came back to emerald just in time to see him being held in the air by another white likeness of Sparky, his hands wrapped around Kelvin's eyes sending small zaps into them to render them useless. Kelvin couldn't struggle against the paralyzing current. In that moment, out of the bottom of her eye she saw the likeness of Angel lift something up. A spurt sounded, and something sharp hit Emerald in the neck. She only had a second to register what it was, a diamond syringe with a hypersonic drill, capable of piercing through Federation body armor, or her own skin. She lost consciousness.

As Emerald's head hit the floor, the likeness of Angel smiled and jerked her head. In response the Sparky above her dropped Kelvin to the floor. He grunted at the landing and scrambled to get up. On his feet the first thing he saw was another bland gray likeness of what he would later come to know as Kixx holding an aerosol can in front of him, obviously taken from somewhere else in the house beforehand. The Kixx pressed down the nozzle and Kelvin's eyes were soaked with hair spray. Kelvin immediately dropped to the floor holding his eyes and shrieking.

The Angel walked up him, hands on her hips, and gave a grunt of loathing.

"_Go back to wherever _Stitch _and_ Lilo _are hiding._" She commanded in his language. "_Tell them we have _Stitch's_ daughters, and that we'll be keeping them at_ Gantu's _ship._"

Kelvin ran toward the direction he knew the door was it. He rammed his head into the door, knocking it open and cracking it, and then tumbling down the stairs.

* * *

The image on the TV got a bit of static. Some meteorologist pointing out two sunny symbols just behind a symbol of clouds, rain, lighting, and wind, all with the volume muted. The TV itself was old and the cable it was hooked up to was corroding. Nani sat on one end of David's couch leaning forward toward the TV with her hands clasped uncomfortably tight. Everyone was asleep at that moment except for her, busily watching the TV, and Jumba, busily typing in his ovoid computer at the other end of the couch with his feet up on the coffee table. 

"Damn jet stream…" Nani muttered to herself.

"What about jet stream?" Jumba muttered in response.

Nani cleared her throat to talk more clearly.

"The islands are right under the fastest part of it." Nani said, nodding her head up for a moment. "So the whether forecast is never more than three days, and even then it's sketchy. It's just that in three days a big thunderstorm is supposed to hit and drop thirty inches."

"So what?" Jumba scoffed. "You and precious family will all being indoors then."

"No it's them I'm worried about." Nani added, shaking her head slightly.

"Them who?"

"You know… Stitch's kids."

They both looked toward the near wall. Sapphire slept like a rock on a recliner next to the couch, clearly picked up and placed there from the floor.

"Is surprising that you are worrying about them." Jumba whispered. "Considering how much you have been disliking them."

"I might be harsh Jumba but I'm not heartless." Nani whispered back.

"Not to be worrying!" Jumba assured her. "If 626's genes are in any way heritable, they will be making with the luau in hurricane if so inclined."

"That's not what I meant."

"What is it you meant?" Jumba raised an eyeridge and glanced at Nani.

"I don't want a thunderstorm to be the last thing they and everyone else on the islands see before they're all fried."

Jumba squinted in confusion.

"I mean," Nani continued. "I mean I want to keep at what they were supposed to be doing."

"Why should they?" Jumba asked. "Their future is already being gone."

This caused Nani to growl and hit her fists against the couch. She stood up and turned to Jumba trying to yell and whisper at the same time.

"Their future!" Nani's arms were flying in too many directions. "According to me their future doesn't even exist yet! According to me the future's still a blank page! And to be honest I'd take just about any future in favor of the Earth getting burnt to a crisp! I want you to talk to the blue one over there when he wakes up okay? I want you to somehow convince him to continue with his mission or what not okay?"

Jumba sighed. He blinked and then closed his computer.

"Will be trying." He whispered. "But cannot be promising results."

"That's all I ask." Nani responded, shaking her head and waving one hand in the air.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Author notes:** I haven't been getting much sleep the past week. As a result, this chapter is shorter than I intended. I cut out the seccond part of it because in my fatigue I knew I was going to write seccond rate stuff. The next chapter (which is just a finnish in this one) is probably going to be very short because of it.

**Other news:** For a few days there was something seriously wrong with the doccument submission function. All I got when I tried to submit a document was an error message. That's why I had to submit this as late as Sunday morning, instead of my usual Friay evening.

* * *

Only silence bathed the room after the blowup that just passed. What was just learned by all present was something that would take some time to even get a decent hold on to. What happened next made the entire situation even more confusing. Each person in the room tried to put some words as to what just happened, knowing no one else would be able to. No one could even know what they were supposed to feel then, except for the three so personally involved.

Nani blinked, paused, and blinked some more. This was the most confounding to her. To Nani, Stitch had been family since only weeks after his first arrival, and she loved him accordingly. But it wasn't until almost a year later that she truly learned to appreciate him, and it wasn't until a year after that when she finally learned to like him. But throughout it all, and even now, she never could accept that her life would never again bear any semblance of normalcy, and that it would be a futile waste of time to try to make it that way. How these aspirations were shattered by the sudden knowledge that in the future, Stitch would have children, was something Nani just couldn't put to words, try as she might. And she did try. Nani raised her hand, only her index finger extended, and opened her mouth slowly to talk. The only thing that came out was a soft squeak.

Nani's legs jittered. She fell back and landed with a grunt into the recliner behind her. Her head fell back behind the back cushion. She now stared straight at the ceiling. Nani reach up and pushed the fingertips on one hand against the side of her head as if trying to relieve a headache.

Pleakly fared no better from the news. His life was in judging what was right in front of his face. He was one who lived only in the here and now, never stopping to consider what might be happening in some other place, or what could transpire in some distant time. Maybe it was just him, or perhaps a primitive aspect of the species, but whenever Pleakly was forced to consider something far beyond the apparent, the immediately tangible and foreseeable, it would produce a psychological overload. Now Pleakly knew that in an indeterminate number of years his life and the lives of those around him would change fundamentally. Then hit another realization that was only what should happen. What was going to happen was that in an inditerminant number of days the planet he lived on was going to be reduced to a lifeless, waterless husk, and he would die, at least according to someone he'd never met until a few days ago. He tried to wrap his brain around the logic and implications behind these realizations. He could not. Instead he charged right into an incoherent panic.

Pleakly began to run in small circles around the spot where he stood. His arms flapped to and from in the air as he screamed incoherently.

"What are we gonna do!? What are we gonna do!? What are we gonna do!? We're all gonna die! We're gonna be burned and boiled! We're gonna be fried and baked!"

Without pausing for breath, Pleakly turned toward Sapphire, who was still trying to stand up, and pointed his finger at him.

"It's your fault! We're all gonna die because of someone who hasn't even been born yet!"

Again, without pausing for breath Pleakly turned back around and aimed his finger at Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand.

"No it's not it's your fault! Yes it's your fault! You made those theoremajigs in the first place! You did it! If it weren't for you we wouldn't all be about to be destroyed by a tiny evil rodent man from the future!"

Pleakly heaved over and hit his head against the floor as soon as he finished his last word. Still bent over he gasped for air.

Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand, stared out at Pleakly and huffed.

"Are you being done?"

Pleakly raised an arm with one finger extended, calling for time as he was still bent in half wheezing for air. With one last great breath, he stood back up.

"Yes." He answered.

Silence returned to the room.

Lilo turned her head about. She looked across the room at Sapphire, barely able to sit up straight and probably not fully comprehending the situation in his inebriation. She looked just behind her at Emerald, lobbed off the edge of the couch and now sitting on the floor. Her fists were clenched and all six of her tendrils were wrapped tightly around her arms. She pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. What exactly Emerald was trying to hold back was not clear, but it was anything but pleasant. She looked off to the side of Emerald at Ruby sitting up on the kitchen floor. All four of her hands were pressed against the floor and her head hung down. She was silent, but were there tears in her eyes? At this distance, and with Ruby's head turned down, she couldn't quite judge.

Out of everyone in the room Lilo was probably the one who could most keen fully understand what was going on and what it all meant. Among the disadvantages of being a child were more subtle advantages, mostly regarding not having to worry about nearly as much. At certain rare times, this quality would actually give a greater insight than an adult mind. It was certainly the case with Lilo now. She could deal matter-of-factly with the notion that Stitch would have children in the future, that they would come back to try to save the past from being destroyed, and would then ultimately fail, meaning there was not much time left within her own present. Still, how she might possibly express her feelings about this, or even what those feelings were, and how to respond was all beyond her grasp, as it would be for the others for a time to come.

Lilo looked down at her hands and twiddled her fingers, knowing nothing else to do.

"Um…" Lilo's voice was barely audible. "Do you… do you think Stitch? … I mean… Do you think we could… I mean… Do you think we could get Stitch to… not be so angry?"

Stitch, not so angry. Ruby heard those words and it was the last tiny push she needed. She let out a small sniffle, and in a few surprisingly long seconds she was crying softly.

Lilo crawled over to Ruby and put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. Ruby let her head fall into Lilo's arms and cried the tiniest bit harder.

Emerald made the first move of the siblings, causing almost a kind of cascade among them.

Emerald raised her fists fully intent on slamming them into the floor hard enough to plow them through to the lower level. She stopped herself just before bringing them down either out of consideration for the floor, or out of just not wanting to be seen losing control. Emerald took two deep breaths, relaxed and stood up. Her tendrils slowly uncoiled from her now numb arms, though she kept her eyes closed.

"The price of living, always on another's whim, gripped by madness."

Emerald opened her eyes and walked toward the door, paying attention to no one else as she passed. She never looked up when she reached up a tendril to twist the knob on the front door. They all watched, but no one said anything as she left and shut it behind her.

Lilo and Ruby both looked at the door. Ruby growled for only a second, regaining Lilo's attention before going back to crying, and after another second quitting entirely. Ruby pushed Lilo away and stood up to walk to the door herself. At the door she had to hop up to grip the handle, but managed to open the door.

"Where are you going?"

Ruby turned around and looked at Lilo. She couldn't very well leave without giving an answer to her of all people. Anyone else in the room maybe, but not to Lilo. Ruby looked down at the floor and bit at her lower lip.

"I don't." Ruby answered. "I'll figure it out when I get there."

Ruby walked out the door.

It was now Sapphire's turn. One hand on the side of his head, he pushed the other against the wall to help prop himself up. He took only a few hobbles and reached out an arm to catch himself falling against the doorway.

"What about you?" Lilo asked Sapphire. "Where are you going?"

Sapphire groaned and pushed a fist against his chest.

"I'm going to sleep." He answered.

Sapphire went limp and collapsed into unconsciousness in the doorway.

* * *

Pain welled in one area of the body, disappeared, and the reappeared in an adjacent area. They weren't quite waves of pain as they didn't travel, instead they merely vanished and reappeared next to where they once were. It started with the feet, then the lower legs, upper, hips, abdomen, chest, neck, head, then down the arms. It went back up the arms into the head before starting back down the body again.

The pain was quite noticeable even without consciousness, and even in the absence of dreams. It was a dull ache, it would come in as a very slow, single throb, then fade away before moving on to its next spot. They pain caused the need to move, and yet the desire to remain still. Though the desire was stronger at first, the need slowly began to overcome it. All that was left to overcome was the paralysis of unconsciousness.

Sapphire twiddled the tips of his fingers. He tried turning from side to side. The movement he achieved could not be noticed by anyone but himself. But eventually, his body achieved more and more mobility, until it was able to lift up its arm and drop its hand over its eyes. That was just enough movement to bring about waking. Sapphire refused to open his eyes. The inside of his ears ached, his teeth ached, his mouth was dry as sand, even his eyes ached. He would lay there motionless and wait this out, until he thought of a way he might possibly speed the process of recovery.

Sapphire rolled over, unaware of where he lay, and fell right off the edge of something onto the hard floor below, landing on his stomach and face. Sapphire groaned and pushed himself up with his arms. Even that was tiring. His arms, normally given him preternatural strength, wobbled as they tried to hold up the weight of his body above the stomach. He fell down onto his shoulder and rolled over onto his back. He finally opened his eyes. His head spun, even though the world around him remained still. Sapphire took deep breath after deep breath. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that he fell off the recliner in the corner of the living room, with a small blanket half hanging from, which he was presumably wrapped in. He must've been moved there after he went under.

Sapphire tried to stand on his own two feet. He almost fell over as he made it, having to hold his head with one hand and swing the other outward for balance. While it grabbed at the air. As soon as Sapphire was able to stand up straight, the was engulfed by vertigo. Standing still he felt as is he was being propelled upward.

He looked around. The kitchen was in plain sight. Dragging his feet, barely lifting them off the ground, he walked over to the kitchen, in front of the fridge, and yanked it open with both hands. He squinted and sneered at the light from the fridge. It caused his eyes and ears to ache even more. But in a few seconds he got used to it and the pain went back to as before. There wasn't much there. David certainly made the best of living off of low income. The only things in the fridge were instant, prepackaged microwave-able and stovetop meals. The top ledge on the door was filled with beer, while the bottom with ginger ale. The carbonation would be good for his condition. Sapphire grabbed a ginger ale. He stabbed the cap with his nail, not even bothering to open it properly, and sucked the entire contents down without breathing. He took a gasp after he finished and crushed the can against his head before dropping it. He searched more.

On the second shelf was he eyed something that might help even more. It was a box of instant, microwave-able hum bao -steamed buns stuffed with Chinese barbequed pork-. He reached up and grabbed it, threw the door shut with his foot, and climbed the counter and sat next to the range.

He looked up at the microwave. It was seven thirty in the morning. He'd collapsed drunk last afternoon and hadn't woken up for more than sixteen hours.

Sapphire threw the entire box in, not bothering to read the directions, and set the microwave for three minutes. As the timer ticked away to its hum, Sapphire got the first really careful glimpse of the apartment since last night. The only things that noticeably changed were the fact that no one was there, and through the big living room window, the sun was still in its earliest stages of rising. Despite this, the scenery seemed to take on a kind of dark and morbid tone to this Sapphire couldn't explain, though it could as easily just be him. With his utterly rational mind, Sapphire assured himself that it was just him, and that nothing outside of himself had really changed.

The microwave stopped. Five short beeps later, and Sapphire pulled out the box of hum bao, ripped it open, and dumped all six of the buns from the box int his wide mouth. He chewed and swallowed the buns and pork, along with the waxed paper pads they sat on.

In minutes his head spun slower. Though his teeth and ears ached, his eyes seemed to be doing better, and the pain in the rest of those parts weren't quite as bad. Sapphire hopped down from the counter and a bit awkwardly walked back into the living room. The couch was now occupied. Nani sat down in a plain white bathrobe covered in images of light blue coffee cups. Her hair was messy, but given the company of those so familiar she didn't seem to mind. Her feet in plain fake-leather slippers rested on the coffee table. She had one arm across the top of the couch while she looked out through the big window into the horizon. Sapphire looked out as well. Far in the distance, but certainly getting closer, were swells of huge black clouds. The fuzz beneath signaled heavy showers over the ocean.

Sapphire walked up to the couch.

"When's it going to get here?" he asked.

Nani didn't seem at al surprised. She didn't turn her head as she answered.

"Day after tomorrow, and it leaves the day after that. It's suppose to drop thirty six inches in thirty six hours."

They both turned their head at the sound of the front door opening. Stitch dropped from the side of the wall to the floor and kicked the door shut as he walked inside. Sapphire tried to approach him.

"Dad?"

Stitch didn't look at Sapphire. As he walked by, he pushed him down with one hand while grumbling at him.

"Meega nala queesta."

It was just loud enough for him to hear it.

Sapphire watches, not in shock, yet not quite unsurprised either, as Stitch walked through the living room, into the hallway, and then as the sound of a bedroom door shut.

Sapphire immediately jumped on top of the couch and fell down to his stomach. He grabbed a pillow and shoved it into his face, and then another to be pulled over his head.

Nani stared at him not quite sure what to make of the display. She knew absolutely for sure he must be feeling horrible, but what exactly he was feeling she couldn't quite grasp. She didn't try, knowing it was useless. Instead she leaned over, lowered her hand from atop the couch, and gave a single soft stroke down Sapphire's back.

This was enough to bring Sapphire's head out of the cover of the pillows. He looked up at Nani, and she could now see he was crying, and at the same time he seemed shocked that she would do such a thing. They stared into each other's eyes. Nani felt a ball form in her throat from being so unsure of what she should say. Then she remembered what she told Jumba last night. That gave her the perfect thing.

"Tell me about your future."

"Why the hell does it matter? No one's ever gonna' see that future, or any future for that matter." Sapphire spouted back, not in a particularly sad voice, but a very fatigued one.

"If it didn't matter you could tell me." Nani answered.

"Give me one good reason why I should?"

"How 'bout sheer morbid curiosity?"

Sapphire huffed. He knew she'd beaten him. In any argument having to do with science or mathematics, Sapphire was always able to turn any other party into the rooms laughing stock. But in arguments of sheer semantics, he was almost never able to win.

Sapphire stood up and crossed his arms over the top of the couch, resting his chin on them and watching the steadily approaching storm.

"I'm not a very good storyteller." He huffed again.

"Neither am I." Nani retorted. "But that never stopped me from telling them to Lilo."

Sapphire groaned. The very last thing he wanted to do right now was to talk about his present. But he'd been forced into a commitment.

"It was five years after we were born… that's nine years from now. They called it the most important discovery since fire or penicillin or a whole bunch of other crap they could come up with. I never understood why they were so hyped over it anyway."At that time, about a dozen or so of the experiments were working at the birds of paradise hotel. No one knows how, but word got that the weird creatures working there were actually aliens. Nobody believed it at first, until they did a DNA test on Felix and found out his DNA was made of six markers instead of the usual four.  
"Washington freaked out after that. In a few minutes the entire state of Hawaii was under military quarantine. We were all going to be sent back to labs somewhere in the snowcapped Colorado rockies and then the state would be under permanent martial law.  
"Fortunately Jumba managed to send a distress call out just before the army showed up, and two days later and a detachment of Federation cruisers parked itself in orbit. After that all hell broke loose. Every nuclear capable country launched its missiles at them and each other. But the cruiser grabbed every last one of them with their tractor beams and hauled them away into their cargo whatevers.  
"Well, after a few weeks of standoff, the US agreed to return us to Kauai and pull the occupation off the island. After that the Federation got to build an embassy on Kauai right next to the Birds of Paradise. You could imagine what happened to the real estate prices after that."

"It went through the roof?" Nani answered.

Sapphire gave a single, stunted laugh under his breath. "That's kind of like saying the pacific ocean is wet Nani. Technically it's accurate, but it just doesn't appreciate the magnitude of it all. No… overnight Kauai became the most expensive real estate in the world. People were being offered ten million for apartments, and a hundred million for houses like this one. After a year the only people who lived here were billionaires, and those who stayed behind just out of principal.  
"As for the hotel, well that was very quickly called the eight wonder of the world, along with the embassy which was the ninth. The demand was so huge that prices that the hotel had to expand six times, and still they had to drive prices up to thousands per night just to get the waiting list down to a half reasonable level. As for us, we all became overnight worldwide super-celebrities.  
"Lilo was eventually given the hotel and Mr. Jameson retired to Fiji. First thing she did was tear it down and build an all new one. She said it was because it was the ugliest hotel she'd ever seen. She hired the guy who built Mandalay bay to do it.  
"… Sicne then there was always the paranoids and churches who wanted the hotel and embassy bombed, or the whole island nuked, but the Federation security was infallible. Or at least it was infallible to a world two thousand years behind them.  
"But it was about four years after that… when Hamsterviel escaped. He tried to take over planet Turo using an army of clones of all the strongest experiments. His next move was to come here to Earth and detain all the original experiments. He had millions of clones, there was nothing the others could do to stop him. But we escaped… me and my sisters that is. We escaped because we weren't in the experiment database. We snuck into Turo capitol posing as tourists. The clone's programming made them more like machines than actual creatures. They weren't really even fully conscious. That's why they didn't recognize us for what we were. We were the ones who stopped Hamsterveil in the end."

Nani lay her head in her hand trying to take in everything Sapphire said. The story he told was unbelievable, even for someone like her, who interacted with aliens every day. She couldn't say anything about the story itself. Trying to come up with a response to something so extravagant was useless. Nani sat still for some seconds trying to think of something to say to Sapphire. She merely blurted out the first thing that came to mind, not caring whether or not it was relevant or appropriate.

"You're better at telling stories then you think."

Sapphire snorted in response. "What the hell use is it? A story is all it is anymore."

"Are you so sure about that?" Nani asked.

Sapphire turned back toward her, this time clearly angry. The tears started up again, but Sapphire displayed not the least hint of sadness. There was only anger in his face. He clamored over to Nani, trying to crawl with his hands clenched in fists. He swung an arm up, but then dropped it back to his side relaxed. Only then did he notice Nani's somewhat fearful glance, though not enough to warrant her crawling back. He sat back down and dropped his head down in front of him.

"My calculations were specifically tailored to figure the odds of us being born despite our interference in the past. Those odds have now dropped below a thousandth of a percent! And my calculations are always flawless. It's over now. No one's left to stop Hamsterveil. He's gonna' win."

"You know." Nani sighed. "I'd rather have just about any future than the Earth getting fried to a crisp Sapphire. Even if it means living under the rule of some psycho rat."

"You don't get it do you?" Sapphire yelled back, visibly startling Nani. "Frying the Earth to a crisp was his plan the whole time! I can stop that from happening now but in eighteen years it'll still happen! You get it now? There's no point!"

Sapphire turned away from Nani and slammed his head back down on the pillows. She could hear him sobbing again.

Sapphire swore this was how he would spend the last few days of his existence. He would never lift his head up from that pillow again. He would never see another site for as long as he lived, however short that would be. There would never again be anything to remind him of what he will never be able to see again, which would be anything at all. But his efforts would never succeed.

Sapphire felt arms wrap around him. They picked him up and held him aloft. He opened his eyes and stared up at the rather confused face of Nani, confused both factually and emotionally.

"I'm sorry." Nani whispered.

Sapphire groaned. This wasn't what he wanted, but tat this point there was very little he could do about it.

At was just then that the door flew open. The inner knob hit the wall so hard it punched a hole in the drywall and disloged small frames around it. Both on the couch jumped and gasped at the suddenness. They looked over too see what was there.

Kelvin stood at the door out of breath. He leaned over and held himself up with a hand against the doorway while another gripped his chest.

"Ju…" He barely wheezed out and took several more very large breaths before trying to speak again. "Jumatoga keeshma Gantu kofosko igchatga!"

"What did he say?" Nani asked.

Sapphire answered utterly nonchalantly. "He says they have my sisters at Gantu's ship."


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Story Notes:** It seems this chapter was longer than I anticipated. I suppose that's good for you.

**Authro Notes:** The holiday season wsa very overstimulating. That's why I so seldom updated during the months of october through december. But hoefully with all of that now gone, I can update more often.

* * *

Everyone was there, in that living room, in the second story apartment. It was only a two room apartment and nothing about it stood out as being anything but a typical, lower middle class place. It was such an ordinary apartment, its ordinariness made bizarre only by the extraordinary things taking place within it.

Everyone was there in that living room. There was barely enough room in there for all seven of them. Nani and David sat on opposite ends of the couch while Lilo and Stitch sat next to each other on the middle cushion. Jumba and Pleakly had to sit on the floor on the other end of the cheap plastic coffee table. Kelvin sat up on the table, hunched over, unable to pay any attention to what was going on. His head slumped down staring at the scratched up, dull brown plastic. His blue eye glowed as he dragged his finger across the table, drawing meaningless swirls in frost that would all be gone in a few minutes anyway. They all wondered what his predicament was, but none of them asked. It was a mystery to all but Kelvin himself. Sapphire sat closest to the TV, staring at it almost hypnotized. He paid no attention to what was being shown, he was in fact scarcely aware of the images hitting his eyes.

The TV was tuned to a local weather forecast. A CG overview of the Hawaiian Islands showed totally calm skies above, but looming from the northwest was a fast moving tropical storm, far too strong to be called a storm, but not strong enough to be called a typhoon. The hands of the meteorologist moved in almost senseless circles as he tried to describe the storm. The meteorologist babbled on incoherently… at least to most.

"Due to the sheer volume of precipitation carried by the storm, the wind speed will be relatively low for a storm of its size and magnitude, only about forty five to fifty five miles per hour. But also due to the sheer volume of precipitation, this storm is expected to be much more destructive than most. Rapid erosion and damage to some foundations is guaranteed. The storm is expected to drop almost thirty six inches of rain over a period of forty one hours."

The meteorologist continued babbling. In reality there was really only one more thing to do in order to both pass the time and give proper emphasis on the just how powerful this thing was going to be, and that was to find new and different ways of saying the same thing over and over again, displaying different representations of the storm on the blue screen each time.

For quite a while they all stood there, listening to ten completely different ways of showing and saying exactly how fast the wind was going to be, how much water was going to be dumped in how long, what areas will be most damaged vs. what areas the least, as well as about a hundred recommendations for waiting through it that were either useless, way too expensive, or something you'd have thought of anyway.

Lilo finally broke the silence.

"Our house is built on a big pile of dirt next to a pond. How do you think it'll turn out there?"

Nani sighed. "Honestly Lilo, I think we have much bigger things to worry about than the house."

"Hmmmng." Sapphire grunted. "Worrying's for stuff that might happen. Might isn't a word that can be applied here. It will happen. Odds are we won't even make it past the storm when the island's roasted."

"Well what about your sisters?" Pleakly suddenly interjected, pushing himself forward from standing and catching himself from falling with his hands to the floor. The gesture toward him wasn't even needed to make it clear who he was talking to.

"What about them?" Sapphire grumbled back. "Whether they're in a home or in a cage it won't make a difference. We'll all end up the same either way.

"How is you are being so sure of self?" Jumba interrupted.

Sapphire finally turned his head toward them, toward Jumba in particular. There was no anger, not even sadness in his face. The only thing truly there, that one could tell, was like a kind of chronic boredom and irritability.

"I can crunch numbers better than you or Stitch."

Stitch narrowed his eyes at the comment. He loathed the thought of someone he considered a cadger outperforming him in any way, even if that person was his son. He clenched one paw into a fist and dug it into the couch cushion. Lilo noticed. She even turned to look. But she said nothing.

Sapphire continued.

"I can't use a computer or even pen and paper for assistance because they just make my calculations take longer. The only reason I ever write them out at all is to show other people, but you and Stitch are the only ones who can ever understand them.

"My calculations are perfect, flawless, they always have been. And I factored in every possible variable, and I did them all three times just in case I did somehow make a mistake. And at this point, the odds that we can save this planet are less than five hundred thousand to one. Those odds aren't even worth fighting for.

"Like I said, worrying's for things that might be. This isn't a might it's a will. You should all take my advice. Stop worrying, and start mourning."

For some time later no one said anything more. Attention focused once again on the TV, and how many different ways it could give the same warning of impending disaster. No one else besides those inside knew of the real impending disaster though.

Lilo lifted her head.

"We should still save them." She said.

Everyone at the room gave her an awkward stare. Lilo opened her mouth as if to speak and then snapped it shut and lowered her head, so self conscious at that moment. Even Stitch stared at her as if she didn't know what she was talking about. She got view of this from the corner of her eye and stared right back at him pleadingly. It was impossible to tell what she was pleading for. The only thing Stitch could do at that moment was to blink and turn his head away from her.

"If what Sapphire's saying is true," David interrupted, noticing the tension. "Than why should we do it?"

"Because!" Lilo shouted back. "Because they shouldn't have to spend their last few days in a cage that's why."

"Like I said." Sapphire interrupted back. "It won't make much of a difference."

That last shouting finally brought Kelvin out of his trance. He lifted his head up to see Sapphire deliver his retort, then everything fell silent again. From what few English words he understood, he could gather that there were experiments from the future trying to save the world that now couldn't be saved. All other subtleties were lost on him. He didn't know who these experiments were, or even if he'd met them. The last three words he that he actually knew the meanings of were 'last', 'days', and 'cage'. He could only guess as to the greater meaning, but it didn't sound good. Nothing that happened recently was good. His head was a whirl of confusion. He didn't understand much of what was happening. He was first activated without a care in the world other than destruction. He was the most powerful of all the five hundreds, and not a day later some strange female experiment nearly beat him to death, almost without even trying. Later that same experiment forcefully seduced him after a near nervous breakdown over what he couldn't even imagine. Now they're all gathered in this tiny space discussing something that had to do something with time travel and the end of the world. He couldn't react in any way to it all. He didn't know how, other than to ask just what the hell was going on.

"gaba ika kudu saphaki blitznack!?" He shouted.

Now it was his turn for the odd stares. Though it didn't bother him much, as he knew it was just because so few people could understand him, only three out of the six. But it got the job done.

Jumba lowered his head and wiped his forehead to his chin with his hand. After raising his head, he began the rather lengthy story of what had happened over the past five days. They all sat and listened to him, for once ignoring the TV. They all listened intently, even though it was only Stitch, Sapphiure, and Kelvin who could actually know what exactly he was saying.

What he heard was not believable. Kelvin had barely escaped the death squads of the Federation, only now to be dehydrated on a planet that was doomed? And from an enemy that is utterly intangible at that! It sounded less like fact and more like a religious portent of doom. There was no way that such a thing could possibly have been true. Kelvin started shaking his head as Jumba went on and on with the story. The longer he listened, the less plausible it became. He shook his head harder as the story progressed, finally ending in how a twenty kilometer long starship would suddenly appear from nowhere and vaporize the oceans and broil the crust of the earth with its weapons. That triggered it. Kelvin slammed his hands against his ears.

"Naga!!!" He screamed. He jumped off the table and charged toward the door, forcing it open with a crash from his shoulder and then carelessly hopping off the side of the balcony to crash into the pavement below. A minutes disorientation left and he ran off in no particular direction.

The only soul who was not visibly upset by the gesture was Sapphire, who sat up with an almost angry grin.

"Go on," Sapphire whispered. "Deny it all you want. Pretend nothing's wrong. See what good it'll do you."

Next it was Stitch's turn.

Stitch growled and finally roared. All attention was then on him.

"Stitch naga sit and wait!" He yelled. "Stitch go with Lilo! Alone! Naga sulk! Have good time!"

Despite his words, Stitch was clearly furious at what was happening, at Sapphire for being the messenger of such news, and at his family for just going along with it all. Baring his teeth and clenching his muscles tight, Stitch grabbed Lilo's wrist and almost dragged her out the front door. Lilo the whole time gave half hearted and most insincere cries of "stop!" and "what are you doing?" 

Nani stood up but was immediately pushed backed down by Jumba's massive hand.

"They are not to be worrying about." Jumba spoke quietly. "Am having other matters of concern."

Jumba knelt over and put his mouth to Nani's ear. Her eyes narrowed.

"May still being possible to save planet." He whispered.

Nani's eyes went wide.

Jumba stood up and finished his sentence out loud. "But must be speaking to Sapphire alone."

"Later." Sapphire mumbled.

"Later." Jumba agreed.

* * *

For about forty five minutes Sapphire watched a mind numbing seventies disco spy serial. The curtains were closed that whole time, though not to block the glare on the TV, but merely because Sapphire couldn't stand looking outside. The living room was made as dark as possible, with the exception of the TV. He wasn't even paying attention to it, but the fact that he heard and saw anything at all from had a sedative effect, which was what he wanted.

Had he been paying attention he'd have seen something whose realism, or lack thereof, would've made him just sick enough to change the channel. The flashy pink, blue, and black logo of Mission Unstoppable flashed and then disappeared, just before you saw a metal tube dripping some sort of glowing green liquid down onto a metal table below, just inches away from the crutch of some white guy in a glittering silver jumpsuit, a pair of oversized shades, and a ridiculously huge, ridiculously blond afro.

The camera zooms out, next to him strapped to an identical table is an overly buff and just noticeably overweight black guy with equally oversized shades, and dressed in some disturbingly fake neo-tribal African top consisting of bone and wooden necklaces, and bright orange jacket with sleaves cut for arms three times as wide as the ones inside. And finally there was the red silk beret. His bottoms of course were black and gray striped zuit suit pants with the most overpriced pure white shoes the producers could possibly find.

Today the moronic superspies seemed to have gotten themselves caught doing their superspy thing well beneath the iron curtain. Once might wonder how considering their near perfect blending-in-attire. Now one evil General Maxim Nefariovitch Jackassovitch was interrogating them with an acid drip, slowly getting nearer their crotches.

The evil General Jackassovitch cackled maniacally in his bright red trench coat.

"I will leave you now to your most excruciating deaths."

And then he promptly left, despite the fact that it was supposed to have been an interrogation.

"Whatawe gonna do now bro?" The skinny white guy shouted. "We're into it to our gold braces now!"

"Just hold on little buddy." The buff black guy responded in his stereotypical buff black guy voice. "Fortunately for you I spent three years training with the Malaysian monks of Mongolia. Let me meditate, and call on my reserves of superhuman strength."

The black guy closed his eyes and began humming to himself in a weird pitch almost like a tuvan throat singer. As the acid drip inched nearer to his nether regions, his hum became louder. Finally, he screamed and ripped the wrist restraints right off the table. And then suddenly the TV went black.

Sapphire shook his head, momentarily put into shock by the suddenness of what happened. The TV had just been turned off. Sapphire looked left, right, and finally behind him. Jumba stood there with one hand on his hip and another holding the remote.

"What do you want? Sapphire grumbled.

Jumbe dropped the remote back onto the coffee table next to the love seat. It hit with several loud clacks. He sat down on the couch.

"Am to ask if you are being absolutely certain of your calculations of doom." Jumba said.

"I'm absolutely sure Jumba," Sapphire groaned. "now turn the TV back on."

"I am not being so sure!" Jumba instantly spoke back with a raised voice.

"What do you mean you're not sure! You saw them didn't you! They were flawless. There wasn't a single mistake in the arithmetic or the logic!"

Jumba nodded while pursing his lips together. He put his hand to his chin.

"Perhaps no mistake was being made in logic or arithmetic. But there may have been mistake in mindset."

Sapphire blinked and then squinted.

"Mindset!?" Sapphire nearly yelled. "What the hell are you babbling about?"

"Have you factored into your calculations of every possible variable?"

"Yes! Of course I did! You saw it remember?"

Jumba nodded and gave a single laugh under his breath.

"Am thinking not." Jumba whispered. "Is one variable you did not factor."

"And what would that be?" Sapphire asked sarcastically.

"Yourself."

Sapphire stood motionless for a few moments. He blinked several times and then shook his head.

"What are you talking about?" He nagged. "How could I be a variable in the caclculations?"

"You may be calculating wrong set of variables." Jumba retorted.

"What do you mean I may be calculating the wrong set of variables?"

Jumbasighed heavily and wiped his brow. He stood up and lumbered up next to Sapphire, sitting down next to him. They both stared each other in the eyes.

"Raw, number crunching, logic extrapolating, model building intellect is what both you and your father have that surpasses even what I can do." Jumba said. "But to scientist, just as important as raw intellect, and often more so, is creativity, ingenuity, imagination."

"I'm not an artist Jumba." Sapphire shook his head as he responded.

"And that is being true problem!" Jumba said loudly. "Any reputable scientist must be artist as well! For artist can see from any and all perspectives. But you… you are only seeing present situation through single, narrow, inflexible perspective. But there are others."

"How does perspective apply to mathematics?"

"Simple!" Jumba nearly shouted, but then became quite again. "Calculations of yours might be being correct. But concept behind calculation might not be being correct. I will be leaving for you to think of it."

Jumba slowly stood up, having to press one hand against his back to avoid falling over. He walked over to the door, leaning side to side as he stepped, opened the door, and left.

The door shut leaving sapphire to wonder just what the hell Jumba was talking about, alone again. His calculations may have been correct, but the concept behind them may not have been. What was that supposed to mean anyway.

The concept behind those calculations was simple. Interfering in the past changes the present. The more interference there is, the more the present changes, and the less likely he and his sisters would be born, and the less likely there would be anyone to stop Hamsterveil. That part he was sure of, because up until a certain point, generally thought to be after his birth, events on earth have little if any measurable impact on events within the Federation.

Was that what Jumba meant? That events now on Earth have more impact on the Federation than first thought? No… the exact date at which Earth began to have any measurable effect within the galaxy at large, and even then a miniscule one, was very well documented. But it could be still, just because they've interfered with the past, earth's behaviors toward the Federation when it finally becomes known to Earth would then be different.

But there was no possible way that could've affected Hamsterveil's plans. Only Jumba and the other experiments were the only ones who had the abilities and the knowledge to stop him, that's why they were all detained. Sapphire and his sisters only escaped detainment because they weren't registered within the experiment database, because they were conceived and born, not grown in a lab. They were the only ones that could've stopped him.

Maybe it meant the experiments would have different offspring, that his mother and father would still conceive, but would conceive different lives than those of him and his sisters. But that went into the realm of pure speculation, and therefore could not be valid.

Everything he calculated, everything he thought of, it all proved that his present no longer existed, assuming that particular present would unfold should no interference in time take place. Maybe that was his mistake, assuming that his particular present would unfold should no interference in time take place, that is assuming anything at all.

Assumption, that was Sapphire's mistake. Assumption is the single worst form of deduction. Jumba had taught him that time and time again, and yet he'd just done it now. But if his present had room for temporal interference… he would have to come up with brand new calculations to accommodate it.

Sapphire lay on the floor, his eyes closed and eyelids twitching constantly. He whipped through massive equations and formulas in his head, rechecking each one twice over. He did this for almost two more hours, until the answer came to him.

Now he knew why Jumba was so cryptic. The answer was something he could never have possibly believed unless he came to it himself.

* * *

Halfway between noon and night, when the sky was still blue all across, but wouldn't stay that way for long, great towering waves barreled forward and broke on hitting the shallows, tumbling down and forward onto the beach.

So many people were surfing those waves right then and there. The tropical storm in the horizon created waves that were meters higher than normal, and everyone wanted to get the most of it before it hit land. But two figures had already surfed those extra tall waves for the past two and a half hours. One was tired, the other on the brink of exhaustion.

Shaded beneath a small thicket on palm trees, a simple, plain white surf board rested across mixed patches of sand and grass. Lilo and Stitch both sat on either side of the board. Both of them were dripping wet, and both of them were wrapped up in towels. They stared out into the horizon, at the storm in the distance. Just yesterday it was barely visible, now it was looming. In two more days it would hit. Most certainly the ground would saturate, tens of millions would occur in damages, and the power would go out in at least two neighborhoods. Or at least that's what the guy in TV said.

But Lilo and Stitch had other concerns at the moment.

"That wasn't as fun as it usually was." Lilo said in a somewhat dull voice.

Stitch didn't respond. Lilo briefly looked at him and then back at the horizon.

"I still think we should save them." Lilo finished.

Stitch grunted and then snorted. He folded his arms.

"Tell Stitch point."

"The point is because well… these next couple days are going to be our last. And that means they're going to be their last too. I think everyone deserves to have their last few days be good ones. I don't think spending your last few days in a cage is very good."

"Naga." Stitch groaned without hesitation.

"Than how about this." Lilo responded. "You should get to know them better before we're all, you know, extra crispy."

"Why?"

Lilo stood up and hovered over Stitch trying to intimidate him. It didn't work as intended, though it did grab his attention.

"Because they're your family Stitch! They're your ohana! But they're not just any ohana! They're not like some degrading grand mother in law that you have to tolerate for a few hours before politely shoving her out the door Stitch! Those are your children! And your children are the most important family of all."

"Maybe later. Nana now,"

"Do you think they care about that? When they look at you they see their father. And what they remember is a father who loves them. Maybe that's what you should try being for our last few days on a planet capable of supporting life.  
"… At the very least it'll be allot less stressful."

Stitch turned away from Lilo and growled. Though it was more for show than for feeling, as Lilo's words actually got his thoughts tilling through the _'what ifs'_ and _'if thens'_ of it all. But no sooner did he begin to think about these things than a familiar scent catch his nose.

"Sapphire." Stitch said.

"What about him?" Lilo asked.

The bushes behind them rustled. Lilo turned to look. Stitch was already turned.

Out from the bushed hopped Sapphire and Finder. Finder pointed straight at Lilo and Stitch and squeaked. From a wallet on a shoulder strap, Sapphire pulled out a twenty dollar bill and handed it to Finder. Finder grabbed it squeaked again, and bounded back ff into the bushes.

"What are you doing here?" Lilo asked.

"The present is still intact!" Sapphire somehow managed to yell while out of breath.

"What!?" Lilo and stitch both yelled at once.

Saphhire stuck out his hand, forefinger extended, and took three very deep breaths.

"We didn't prevent our present by interfering with the past," Sapphire exclaimed. "we caused it!"


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Author Notes:** I meant to say this three chapters ago but it kept slipping my mind. At this point I just want to get this tory done as fast as I can, so I'm postponing any updates on Digimon Rising until I do.

* * *

It looked like any other time they'd seen it. It looked just as peaceful. By now the rocks had settled around it and the vines had started growing up it. It almost looked as if it belonged. The irony was lost on no one, for it clearly did not belong. It never belonged there. It never even belonged on this planet. How it got here was purely accidental. And also unlike appearances, today was not like any other time they'd seen it. Today success or failure meant something far greater than it normally did. 

The three of them stood there side by side all silent, all staring out over a clear pond taking up about four or five acres. Sheer cliffs in the background poured down almost a dozen small waterfalls. The entire basin was an almost perfectly lush rainforest. It was the kind of place most nature photographers could only dream of. And right in the middle of it, like some kind of bad joke, was a huge bulbous black space ship jutting up from the ground. Lilo & Stitch stood side by side, Sapphire standing just behind them.

"Is it a trap?" Lilo asked in a shy, almost whispering voice.

"Of course it's a trap." Sapphire responded in an equally shy, almost whispering voice. "They wouoldn't have told us anything if it wasn't a trap. Hamsterveil wants all three of us out of the way, and that means me too."

"Gaba-ga chooga toka?" Stitch asked in a rather short tempered way.

"I guess… because none of us can think of anything better to do." Sapphire answered.

"So do we go in or not?" Lilo asked.

"We certainly can't just stand here forever." Sapphire answered.

Each looked at the other two momentarily. The three of them reached a silent agreement. Inside Gantu's ship was most likely a trap. But Like Sapphire said, there was nothing better that any of them could think to do at the time. They stepped off the dirt into the water, slowly wading toward the ship.

* * *

­­­­­­­­­ 

Inside was dark. Inside it was cold. Inside it was hard. It was not comfortable. Then again so few things were comfortable nowadays. And this physical discomfort was nothing compared to many other forms of discomfort Emerald was feeling right now. Where she was she couldn't even guess. All she knew for sure was that she was inside a large clear tube with rounded ends, in some kind of very, very small warehouse. Her tube was strapped to the wall. From the dim light she could look out across the room and see floors, walls, and ceilings all of the same dark bluish metal paneling. She could see large containers of all different sizes arranged into a kind of organized clutter. Lilo or Stitch would instantly know that this was the middle deck, the cargo deck, of Gantu's ship. But Emerald had never seen it before. By the time she'd been born it was long gone. So she had no idea where she was.

Wondering where she was would get Emerald nowhere, and she knew that. So her thoughts trailed back to her discomfort. At least that's what she tried to call it, not out of denial, but out of properness. What she called discomfort was actually more like violent self-loathing.

What had she done the night before last? What had she done to Kelvin? Not caring that they were in fact lovers in the present, right here in the past she was a complete stranger to him. She did not lose control. No, whenever she lost control she would always gain it back very quickly, and after scolding herself she would be no worse for wear. This time she'd done something so much worse. She'd abandoned control. That was something she could never cover for, no matter how hard or how long she struggled to. Her flawless mastery of formality and protocol were always her greatest source of pride, and they were absolutely necessary for her to be able to keep her sanity with the kind of work she did. But somewhere inside her was what could only be described as the culmination of her father's ferocity and her mother's lasciviousness. Now that she'd let it free once, she could certainly continue to suppress it, but there was nothing she could ever do to convince anyone that it wasn't there somewhere.

She tried to remember what she was like during her glory days, long before this happened. She was determined to spend as long as she could with only the good memories of the trim and proper Emerald before she was roasted.

* * *

­­­­­­­­­­­­ 

It wasn't a big amphitheater, and it was the only one they had. Nonetheless it somehow suited the needs of the hotel perfectly. The need it suited right now was that of Emerald's dual daily piano concerts. The polished bamboo ceilings reflected just the right amount of sound into the audience, and in just the right way, to give it a richness and fullness while still remaining at a moderate volume. Her brother insisted on coating the walls and ceilings of the stage with polished bamboo, and he was always right when it came to these engineering type of things. But Emerald didn't care about any of that now. Right now all she cared about was performing to the expectations of the critics, critics who had heard grand master human pianists. She wasn't quite at that level yet, but she would play until her fingers bled and her tendrils swelled if it meant getting the least bit better.

Right now she played the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. It was vastly different from the slow, methodical, mellow dramatic tune most thought of when they heard the name. That was the first movement. The third movement was its polar opposite. The third movement could be called hyperactive, it was the true test of just how quickly one could play. It's complex lines were played at almost four times the tempo of any normal piano sonata, and all the lines had to be executed in instant succession. The third movement could also be called a piano sonata on speed. But so far Emerald was keeping up with the notes written in front of her, in the tempos it indicated for them. Her hands and all six tendrils worked furiously, all very sore, to keep up.

Every so often she would hit the wrong key. But they all whirred past so fast that only the critics noticed. Emerald was furious and ashamed of every last mistake she made, however few there were, and even though only one or two of the audience of several hundred would notice. Certainly the critics would point that out. They would write it in their publications. Then everyone would know she wasn't truly a grand master. And so she was secretly furious at and ashamed of every mistake she made, however few.

Finally, Emerald hit the last few keys, pounding the last few notes to add extra volume and emphasis. The third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata were over. Emerald pushed her extra high bench away from the Piano with her tendrils and slid off, landing neatly on the floor. A bow to each side of the standing ovation and one last bow toward the middle, and she hurried off the stage.

The official stage exit would be too much for her. She knew that I she took it there would only be a mo of autograph, photograph, and interview seekers. Such things she would only give out by scheduled meetings. Everything she ever did was base on meetings and schedules and dates and times. She abhorred the very idea of doing anything spontaneously.

There were other doors and exits that from the stage that the general public did not know, or at least wasn't supposed to know, about. Emerald walked off stage to the right as if she would walk down the ramp into a waiting room to the side. Instead she turned just after being obscured by the curtains and walked through a hole in the wall just tall enough for her to fit through, meant for pushing through trash and cleaning bins. She walked through a scant room with plain concrete floors and unpainted walls where small crews worked to clean and retune various musical instruments, and to prep various costumes and magic equipment. She garnered only slight attention, as they were all used to seeing her take this alternate route after her shows.

Emerald took a memorized path of twists and turns through undecorated, unimpressive corridors and service rooms only ever seen by small time workers, and people who want to avoid being seen, to finally reach a plain square office. Back at the exit ramp of the stage, a small crowd of unscrupulous journalists and autographs resellers wondered just where she was, as they always did. Even through these years none of them seemed to learn that they would never see her exiting the stage where it she was supposed to.

The office was almost as meager as the path Emerald walked to get there. It had a large multi-level wrap around corner desk with two computers and an unmentionable amount of paper space, almost all of which was used up. But these were all generic and built for efficiency rather than looks. The only other things in the office were two other chairs in front of the desk, a large filing cabinet extending across the wall and a couple potted umbrella trees shoved in a corner.

Emerald lifted herself up with her tendrils to sit down in one of the chairs. At the desk stood a short, middle aged woman with short hair, thick glasses and a squeaky voice. She busily went back and fourth between typing on a computer and writing on paperwork.

"Schedule?" Emerald asked without even the slightest respect for anything except time.

The lady huffed. She flipped through a rotary schedule and ran her finger down it. She spouted off what she saw with the same disrespect for anything but time.

"Five to five thirty you've reserved for yourself and Kelvin at his private suit. Five thirty you have half an hour to play with the kids of those Japanese VIPs at the Silver Suite, after that another half hour with the kids of the raffle winners at deluxe suite nine. Six thirty to seven is an interview with some Russian variety show at deluxe suite four. Seven to eight you and your brother and sister have to personally cater at the Ivory room for the new Fedreation negotiations. After that, you've got to stay around until ten to mediate. Then you're off until six in the morning when you have mail in autograph signing for and hour and a half."

Emerald immediately fixated on five to six. She had to play with kids. Normally there were things more torturous than that, but for the first half hour she had to play with VIP kids. The little bastards treated her like some baby exotic pet that they could do whatever the hell they wanted to with, from playing dress up to performing parlor tricks to galling, humiliating hugs, and all because they thought it cute and funny. And their self righteous multi millionaire parents found absolutely nothing wrong with that, not considering for a moment that she had her own feelings and desires. At the very least the next half hour was with some middle class tourist's kids who won a random drawing. The ones with five figure incomes at least had respect enough to give the experiments their space and dignity… usually. And if they didn't, their parents would usually scold them for it.

The interview after that promised to be a world of boredom. Emerald remembered one time years ago when she would look forward to interviews. That all died once she realized they were all exactly the same. First they would ask questions about how she got to where she was. The answers to them were always the same interview to interview. She would tell the same story. At this point she'd memorized it word for word. Then they'd ask questions about what it's like being so famous. She would tell them that it's a lifestyle so busy that most wouldn't be able to stand it, though it came with the fringe benefits of unmatched luxury. Finally she would make statements on how she so wished people would treat her as a person rather than a source of personal status. Saying so never made the slightest difference, but she continued to do so just because it was expected of her. Finally they would ask her of her opinions on recent political issues, and she would come up with some way of formally and respectfully giving no opinion on any subject, even though she had plenty.

The catering was something Emerald at least partly enjoyed. For the most part she would only interact with people she knew well, and do so while doing something that did not require diplomacy, cordiality or tolerance for the near intolerable.

But all that would be over once the catering ended and the negotiations began. This time it was about whether or not it was legal for US and Canadian citizens to revoke their nationality for the sake of applying for Federation citizenship. The whole question was absurd! The Federation was exactly any country, only exponentially larger. And neither the US or Canada would bat an eye at one of their citizens revoking their nationality just to become a citizen of another country on Earth. The only thing stupider than the subject of the negotiations were the negotiations themselves. It was all little more than a flurry of accusations and insults, not between the humans and the Federation, but among the humans themselves. The Federation Ambassadors did little more than sit at the other end of the table silently, while Emerald did little more than attempt to keep the humans from assaulting one another, sometimes going as far as having to physically restrain one or more of them.

From that point she would sleep all the way from eleven until six in the morning, where she would have an hour and a half of mind numbingly repetitious signing and paw-printing the backs of post cards with photos of herself doing things like playing her piano concerts, posing with only scantily important dignitaries, or just sitting in a chair and looking refined in an very political looking office that existed only on a sound stage for a couple hours before being disassembled.

But Emerald would work through all this, because she was a professional. No, she wasn't a professional; she was the professional. She wrote the book on professionalism. All the other experts on professionalism out there followed her example. Such skills were a necessity for mediating, her almost preternatural insightfulness alone simply wouldn't do the job. And being so professional in the face of such stress… that was her greatest source of satisfaction. She would work through all of this with a kindly tone, a perfect politeness, and a distant smile. In the end, that would make her feel very big indeed.

Emereld swiped a small spreadsheet printed on a card from the lady with a tendril and brought it to her hands. Her schedule for the rest of the day was printed on it. Without another word Emerald pushed herself off the chair and went to exit the office. The lady at the desk decided to take the opportunity to speak.

"You shouldn't do this to yourself."

Emerald stopped in shock at the expression. How dare this woman be so presumptuous, so audacious that she suggest such a thing. Emerald sneered and bared her teeth. Than again, what was she suggesting?

Emerald whipped around to face the woman, who saw the pleasantly smiling, yet somehow deadpan face she was always used to. Not the slightest hint of anger or contempt could be found in her expression, her posture, or her voice.

"Could you please clarify that?" Emerald requested.

"None of the other experiments work themselves half as hard as you do." The woman continued. "You're pushing yourself way past your limit, and I think if you do this much longer you'll snap."

"I do schedule regular time for my own recreation Ms Spence." Emerald responded.

"That's not enough and you know it. You need to do something… random, totally for yourself or else your gonna' have some sort of episode."

Do something random? This woman had just stepped far, far beyond her limits.

"Do I show any exterior sign of the kind of stress you are referring to?" Emerald asked. And while most would simply find it polite, the woman Ms Spence knew Emerald long enough to know it was intentionally condescending. She did not answer.

"I take your silence as a no." Emerald finished. "And in that instance your claims have no merit."

Emerald walked out the door and made her way once again through a memorized path through unimpressive corridors and service rooms only ever seen by small time workers, and people who want to avoid being seen. This time she headed toward employee's suite number one seventy seven, hers and Kelvin's.

Kelvin left the door open a creak knowing the exact time she would be there, the same time every single day. She walked into the suite, a rather typical white walled, baby blue carpeted suite compared to the colorful island motif ones the guests use. She sat herself up on the brownish grayish denim couch and grabbed a glass of a local mixed fruit wine from off the arm, downed it in one gulp, and turned on the TV to some news channel. The glass was always on that arm, and she'd always sat in the same spot and drank it in the same way.

Kelvin himself wasn't far behind. He came from the bedroom and hopped up on the couch right next to her.

"How was your day?" He asked.

"Very busy." Emerald answered.

Every day Kelvin asked that question, and every day Emerald gave that same answer. Kelvin actually wanted her to complain about the day, about how busy it was, about how she was treated by the strangers she had to mingle with, about the inanity of whatever negotiation she currently mediated, about anything. But she never did. Emerald would not dare complain about anything. She would never be able to forgive herself for committing an act of such vulgarity. But every day Kelvin asked hoping she would.

But though today was no different from any other day, he went straight to business. Kelvin crawled up behind Emerald and dug into her shoulders with his hands. He dug into her shoulders again and again with as much force as his hyper strong muscles could manage. He didn't even think once about whether he should, knowing that even with his incredible strength he could not hurt her in the slightest. Both of Kelvin's eyes glowed. He sent waves of alternating heat and cold through Emerald's muscles from the palms of his hands.

Emerald truly enjoyed this, less from the feeling of the massage and more because it was one of the very few things in her life that just barely kept her frustrations from totally consuming her.

Emerald folded her tendrils forward and lay them on her lap, her hands on top of them. Emerald scheduled to spend time with Kelvin alone in the living room, not in bed. Emerald would never dare to deviate from her schedule, it would be almost as bad as complaining. And she knew that if he could get away with it, Kelvin would go straight for the ultra sensitive tips of her tendrils. That Ms Spence in all her audacity and nerve was right about Emerald being on the edge. Emerald knew If Kelvin got ahold of what he wanted, she would not be able to control herself. She would leap on him like a vicious animal, not caring about anything except satiating her desires. But that would not only be breaking her schedule, it would be obscene. So she kept her tendrils safely curled up on her lap, covered by her hands. She enjoyed her shoulder massage as much as she could, feeling smug as an ass that she could keep her perfect professionalism even this close to Kelvin.

* * *

By the time Emerald couldn't remember any more detail, tears streamed freely down her fur. She held herself in a ball and shivered and stuttered as she cried. She finally lost everything she was. A single act from two nights ago, almost forcibly seducing a Kelvin who didn't even know who she was. It was horrific, it was unforgivable, it destroyed everything she worked so hard to become. Even if the world was going to end with her in this little glass tube, Emerald would at least be partially content if she knew she'd kept herself to the very end. She dedicated herself to wallowing for the rest of her life, however idiotically short that would be. 

Her wallowing was shortly interrupted, and the bottom of the tube fell out from beneath her and she fell almost seven feet to the floor. Immediately righting herself, Emerald found Lilo, Stitch, and Sapphire all surrounding her.

"You shouldn't have saved me." Emerald groaned.

"Yes we should've!" Sapphire shouted. "The present is still intact!"

"That's not the point!" Emerald shouted back. "I don't deserve this! I'm a bastard! I'm a rogue!"

"What the hell are you babbling about?" Sapphire demanded.

Emerald quieted and looked down. "I seduced Kelvin."

Lilo gasped and covered her mouth.

"How far did you go with him?" Sapphire whispered.

"As far as I possibly could… and then some."

Sapphire giggled under his breath and shook his head.

Emerald was noticeably distraught by this.

"What the hell's so funny?" She barked at her brother.

"I always knew sooner or later you'd do something like this."

Both Stitch and Lilo backed off several steps, both knew they wouldn't have anything to contribute, or would even be able to understand much of what was being said, but both were very interested. And although Stitch tried to feign apathy, he too wanted to know what was going to be said.

"What!?" Emerald yelled back at Sapphire.

Sapphire put his hand out and finished giggling. "As good as you are at knowing what other people are thinking, the one thing you never got was just how much we could all see through you."

"See through me?"

"Me, Lilo, Nani, Jumba, Kelvin, Keoni… hell even Pleakly and Ruby could see through you. We all knew you were just putting on an act, and we all knew eventually you wouldn't be able to anymore."

Emerald fell to her knees, horrified at what she was hearing, her breath stuttering.

"It's not something to feel bad about Emerald." Sapphire continued. "Actually I think it's a good thing."

Emerald didn't answer, but Sapphire acted as if she did.

"Do you remember the Emerald from back when we were little kids… I mean from back when we were nine year olds? Do you remember that Emerald? The Emerald who would get back at people who called her a freak by sticking cayenne pepper in their shower heads? The Emerald who would start a poi fight in the middle of a banquet of politicians because seeing so many suits ruined the atmosphere? The Emerald who would sneak her human friends free passes to the hotel spas? Or how about the Emerald who would beat another experiment to within an inch of his life for picking on her brother?

"She might have disappeared, but we all knew she wasn't really gone. And you know what? We all liked her a hell of allot better than the stuck up, snobby, straight-laced, kosher Emerald that replaced her. And you want to know more? Every time we had to deal with that Emerald we cringed and wanted the old one back."

Emerald couldn't believe what she was hearing. She had been training and practicing for all these years for nothing. Everything she strived to be was what others hated within her. How could she not see it? And how could anyone want that hyperactive, wild, impatient, hot headed, temperamental thing over what she was now.

"Why did no one ever tell me?" Emerald asked.

Sapphire answered as nonchalantly as possible. "We knew it would break your psyche."

"And how could you like me better the way I used to be?"

Sapphire answered again just as nonchalantly. "To be honest… your new persona is… pretty damned arrogant."

Emerald collapsed, hitting her face on the ground crying. She still couldn't believe what she heard, or at least she didn't want to. Then she stopped and stood back up, something she heard just came to the forefront of her mind that didn't quite make sense.

"Wait a second." Emerald spoke half way toward a whisper. "The present is still intact?"

"Yes!" Sapphire shouted.

"But you said your calculations were flawless."

"My calculations were flawless given the variables I was using, but uhhh, I was using the wrong variables."

Emerald looked at Sapphire confused.

"I was working under the assumption that our present was the one that would occur within a totally unpolluted timeline, and thusly that any interference with the timeline would make it less likely. Then I remembered back when Jumba had us kept beneath the static temporal shield. He said that even the timeline free from Hamsterviel's meddlings showed signs of significant temporal intrusion, and that he had to compensate to let it through because he didn't know what would happen to us if he blocked it.  
"That temporal intrusion? That was us! That was us acting right her and now, changing the past. Don't you get it!? We created our own present by changing our past. Once I calculated the new variables, everything fell into place. The reason Kelvin wanted to get so close to you when you got old enough was because of you seducing him now."

Sapphire turned to face Stitch. "The reason you named us what you did wasn't because we reminded you of gemstones, but because you already knew our names in advance."

Stitch shuffled his feet. The thought of being so attached to these creatures that he would take it upon himself to name them was still uncomfortable for him.

"… And when Hamsterviel escaped from prison, you Lilo, seemed to know every move he was going to make. It was because you did know, because I told you."

"So…" Emerald whispered.

Sapphire turned around toward her.

"So we don't have to worry about non-interference, because we're not inhibiting our present, we're causing it. And I don't know what kind of present would happen if there was no interference from any source, but our present is a very good, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. The only true threat to our present now is Hamsterviel."

"When Hamsterviel show up?" Stitch asked out of the blue.

"I don't know." Sapphire replied, shrugging his shoulders, not turning back toward Stitch. "Anywhere from twenty four hours, to twenty four days. But when he gets here, we'll know it."


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Author notes:** I'm sorry for having not update in so long, especially considering my promise that I would. I don't think I can keep making up excuses as to why I update this story so seldomly. The truth is, I'm kind of running out of inspiration for Gems.Right now, the major reason I'm continuing this is because I know how upset all you would be if I quit, especially so close to the end. I'm lucky that I am so close to the end, or else I don't think I'd be able to come up with the rest.

**Story Notes:** I've just added a few sentences from yesterday. It now explains how Stitch is sedated.

* * *

Not one, but two in a row. Just one of them would be enough throw her mind into disarrangement for weeks. After that would come horror. After that, who knows? But two in a row was simply more than her brain could wrap itself around, and it crashed. 

Emerald sat motionless, her face once a myriad of changing expressions, softened into nothing. She'd just learned that everything she and they had assumed was completely wrong, not only about time, but about herself. It wasn't something she could quite fathom, at least not yet. Trying to do so put her suddenly into a kind of mental shock. For that moment, her mind was a blank. She was in a kind of self-induced, conscious coma.

A small paw settled on Emerald's shoulder.

"Are you there?"

The voice alone was enough to jolt Emerald back to the here and now. She shook her head and realized where she was, back in the dark, metal crate and glass tube filled cargo hold of Gantu's ship. The voice was her brother's, and the hand was also his.

Emerald looked into Sapphire's eyes. She saw her reflection in the obsidian black. Staring at herself, Emerald's mind wandered back to those two things that had just been revealed to her.

Her actions in the past did not interfere, but rather instigated the present. And her perfect veil of perfect etiquette and protocol was not only utterly transparent, but despised. She could barely comprehend one of these things, at least at the moment. Both of them were too much. If she thought about them much longer she'd go back into that state. But she couldn't help but to think of these things. Though perhaps a steady conversation would keep her alert throughout it. The matter that most concerned her was the natural choice for said conversation.

Lilo still listened intently to what they said. Stitch did as well, though he still tried to make it appear as if he didn't.

"I did that because I had to." Emerald whispered.

"Did what?" Sapphire asked.

Emerald paused and blinked several times. "Because it was the only way I could do my job. I always knew what other people were thinking. That's why they always wanted me as a negotiator. But I had to do that! I had to turn into that or else I couldn't negotiate! I can't give that up! If I did I couldn't do my job!"

Emerald had since stood up and taken several steps toward Sapphire in anger. She was indefinitely more physically capable than he was, but he stood his ground without flinching, for he knew she would never raise an appendage to him. Unexpectedly, he took several steps toward her just as angrily, and just as menacingly.

Sapphires arms flew about as he yelled at his sister. "And we all knew that too! And we didn't have a problem with it! Not at first, not when you just kept it to your work! But then you started acting like that all the time! Everywhere you went, to everyone you met, to me, to Ruby, dad, mom, Nani, Lilo, you were always this straight edge pompous ass as if you were on the job!"

Emerald once again fell down, frightened not by her brother, leagues stronger than any human but still a weakling compared to her, but by his words. She tried to scoot back as he continued stepping toward her.

Sapphire continued yelling at her. "And as good as you've gotten at being Ms. Perfect Kosher Emerald, I'd have thought that maybe, just maybe you'd have learned to turn that persona off and on, keep it for the negotiation table and just be Emerald all the other times, the Emerald who did what the hell she wanted and never made any excuse for her behavior, the Emerald that people actually enjoyed the company of!  
"Well clearly it's something you need to learn."

Emerald was in tears at this point, though she was far from sobbing. She was in too much shock for that. She only stared mouth agape at her brother, trying to think of something to say back to him. She could think of nothing.

"I'm sorry," Sapphire whispered, his head lowered slightly. "But you really did need that. But we can talk about it later. Right now there's more important things to do."

"What?" Emerald had forgotten at that moment about anything other than what was just said.

"Ruby remember?" Sapphire reminded her. "Ruby's still here!"

That was right. Ruby still was there, somewhere. They hadn't found her yet.

Sapphire lowered an arm. Emerald hesitated, but eventually grabbed it and pulled herself up. They looked at Lilo and Stitch, several meters away. Lilo stared at them with kind eerie intensity. Stitch on the other hand had his back toward them and his arms folded. However, a single ear pointed in their direction told them that he was indeed just as interested as Lilo.

"You were listening to everything weren't you dad?" Emerald asked.

Stitch cringed and grit his teeth. How could she have known that?

"Naga!" Stitch shouted, and quickly flipped his ear back the other direction.

"You care a bit more than you'd like to admit." Emerald said.

"Naga!" Stitch shouted again.

"Well whatever," Emerald continued. "Ruby's still here, we need to find her."

"I think that's one thing we could all agree on." Lilo whispered, stepping toward Emerald and Sapphire.

Stitch at last turned toward the rest of them. They all looked at each other one by one, and one by one they all nodded. They would have to search for Ruby.

And so they began. Silently, they all split up. They crawled about the ovoid cargo hold of Gantu's ship, taking up the center deck. Some like Lilo and Sapphire could only feel around as they could barely see with such little light. Stitch and Emerald could both see in infrared. They both blinked their eyes, which glowed red as they opened. The hold lit up brightly to them both after that, but in a vastly different color scheme.

In reality, both Lilo and Sapphire were not very good at searching. Not only were they hard of seeing in the dark, but their search was limited to the ground. Stitch on the other hand, could cling to almost any surface climbing like a gecko, while Emerald could extend her tendrils, wrapping them around any convenient object to pull herself up to it. A silent agreement was reached by all of them on this, and both Lilo and Sapphire returned to the elevator while Stitch and Emerald searched.

"Check it out." Lilo whispered to Sapphire. "Stitch is cooperating with Emerald."

"Quiet!" Sapphire shushed. "He doesn't know that."

Stitch and Emerald continued searching. Lilo watched with just a little bit of awe at what he saw, while Sapphire watched with a mere smirk.

Both Stitch and Emerald agreed that they'd have to get to the other decks, the top command deck, and the bottom living deck, by crawling through the ventilation system. But the old vent shafts were dripping with water, and coated with earthly slime. Stitch's paws couldn't cling to them. Emerald's tendrils could grasp a vent cover and pull it off, and then wrap themselves tightly around the opening to the shafts. Both Lilo and Sapphire saw something that was only slightly amazing.

Stitch climbed up the walls and eventually across the ceilings of the cargo hold, heading toward the slime coated vent shaft. Stitch clung to Emerald's ears, dangling down from them. When they got close enough to the vent, Emerald extended her tendrils toward the vent cover and pulled it off. It landed with a soft crash on the floor. Emerald grabbed hold of the edge of the opening with her tendrils, and at that moment Stitch dropped from the ceiling. Now Stitch was hanging from Emerald. He quickly scurried and climbed her tendrils to the vent shaft opening and crawled inside. Emerald then lifted herself up into the opening, and they both vanished inside it.

Lilo and Sapphire looked at each other, Lilo with an expression of slight shock and Sapphire with one of smugness.

"He'd never have let that happen if you'd said something." Sapphire said.

"He'll realize what he did later." Lilo spoke back.

Sapphire laughed once under his breath. "But by then it'll be too late."

Lilo and Sapphire sat there for almost an hour or more, waiting for Stitch and Emerald to get back. They didn't say another word throughout, but managed to pass the time by giving each other periodic glances, rocking back and forth, twiddling their fingers or tapping rhythms into the metal floor with their fingernails.

At the end of that time, they both jumped in surprise when Stitch and Emerald both landed with a hard thud on their feet right in front of them.

"Sorry." Emerald said, before they could even regain their composure.

"Nothing here." Stitch said, shaking his head.

"The whole ship's deserted." Emerald added. "My only guess is that they're keeping Ruby somewhere else."

"Then…" Lilo whispered. "Then we should go. We need to find her."

They all looked at each other and nodded. Together, they stood up and walked into the elevator. A few buttons pressed by Emerald's tendrils and they were on their way to the lower deck, the living deck.

The elevator was the only lighted place in the ship, all other rooms had to be viewed by its light alone. But the lower deck was one that was not cluttered by panels and consoles, nor by crates and barrels. The beam of light that shone through gave a clear view straight down the deck to the entrance of the ship.

Neither Sapphire nor Emerald, so unfamiliar with the ship noticed, but Lilo and Stitch knew immediately that it was there. There was something very wrong with the entrance to the ship. Lilo and Stitch both stopped while Sapphire and Emerald continued to walk forward, until they too stopped to look back at them.

"Something wrong with ship." Stitch said, pointing to the entrance.

"What is it?" Sapphire asked.

"It's shorter." Lilo answered. "It's supposed to be longer than this. And the ramp is at the end of a hallway, that wasn't there before."

Emerald and Sapphire looked back at the entrance. It was indeed what Lilo had described. There was a wall not too far in front of them. A hallway in the center led back further to the exit ramp. But as neither of them had ever seen the inside of the ship before, it didn't look out of the ordinary.

Sapphire turned back toward Lilo. "Are you sure?"

"Deactivating holoemitters."

The voice sent all four of them looking in different directions before they realized it was the voice of the ship's computer.

The wall at the far end of the deck suddenly turned monochrome, grabbing their attention once again. The wall faded into transparency, and then into nothing. The true lower deck was as both Lilo and Stitch remembered it. It extended much further back, with the ramp at the end of it, against only one wall.

This time the floor of the back area of the deck was regularly outlined in the shape of the previous wall with tall, glowing glass rods set in small metallic platforms. Behind it, waited numerous creatures.

There were experiments, nine of them. There was Kixx, Sparky, and Zap, but there were three of each of them. And they weren't normal. Their bodies were only dull grays. Their eyes had no sheen, and looked like charcoal. None of hem had any expression. They didn't show any trace of feeling or thought. It was as though they were zombies.

"What are they?" Lilo whispered, slightly in fear, slightly in confusion.

"Clones." Emerald answered. "They don't have feelings, thoughts, or even consciousness. They're like machines. Hamsterviel uses them as his army."

There were other figures there as well. Gantu stood in the back corner of the ship, his face full of frustration and confusion, at what could not be told. But he stood there with his arms folded, leaning up against the wall, his blaster holstered, as if having been forcefully removed from the experience.

625 was also there, laying on his back and reaching out and trying to grab at nothing. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth and he groaned, not of pain or fatigue, but simply because he seemed unable to do anything else.

There were two more figures, both being held by a single gray Kixx. The first was an experiment, slightly smaller than Stitch but of the same general shape. But it was obscured by the shadow in the back of the ship. The second was Ruby, who tried to lift her head over and over, but couldn't seem to muster the strength. Her tongue also hung out of her mouth, and she stood limp like a rag doll. If it weren't for the Kixx holding her up, she'd be on the floor like 625.

Finally, a small hovering monitor in front of all of them showed the face of Dr. Hamsterviel, but one partially covered by shadow. Through the shadow it could be seen that one of the eyes glowed a bright yellow. He spoke, but not in the irate, shrieking voice many of them were used to. His voice was now soft, calm, with only undertones of rage.

"As you can see." Hamsterviel said. "There is now no chance for your success. You will not leave this ship alive."

625 lifted his and coughed.

"You son of a bitch!" 625 moaned. "You never said anything about… killing other experiments."

"That is why I had you tranquilized." Hansterviel screamed. "Now… my dear 626. I would not be so cruel as to leave you and your family to die without first giving you a moment's joy."

The Kixx that held the shadowy figure threw it forward. It landed on the ground in the light. Lilo and Stitch both gasped when they saw what it was. It was clearly hurt. It bled from its nostrils and had stains on its fur from similar bleeding. It looked up at Stitch and held out its arm pleadingly. It looked similar to Stitch, but not quite as tall, not quite as solid, and distinctly feminine. It's smooth antennae trailed behind it ending in bulbous tips at its ankles. Its fur was a light pink.

"Bugiboo." It squeaked.

"Angel?" Stitch shouted, and immediately ran on all fours to the experiment.

Emerald and Sapphire instantly recognized through what it really was.

"No don't!" they both screamed in unison.

Stitch didn't hear any of it though. He kept running. When he reached Angel almost leapt on top of her, but he was sure not to actually harm her. He lifted her up. She smiled at him weakly, but gratefully. Angel's scent filled Stitch's nose. It was exactly how he remembered it when he first met her. She smelled like lemon and raspberry. The scent intoxicated him from the memory.

Just barely, Angel managed to wrap her arms around Stitch's shoulders, and press her nose against his own. She cocked her head to the side and pressed her lips against his, surprisingly hard given her current state.

Sapphire screamed yet again. "She's not Angel! She's a clone!"

A clone? She wasn't a dull gray. Her eyes were glossy and had feeling in them. And she smelled like Angel. She smelled like Angel the first time he met her. But wait. That wasn't how Angel smelled. Or at least that wasn't how Angel smelled right now. Stitch had smelled her only a few days ago, from her fur, blood, and tears she left for him. That was the smell of Angel, but it was also the smell filth, starvation, and decay. This Angel lacked all of these things.

But by the time he realized this it was too late. Some foul tasting liquid was expelled from Angel's mouth and ran down Stitch's throat. Within seconds, Stitch both saw and felt the world spinning around him. He couldn't tell which way was up or down. His entire body seemed to turn into jelly. He went limp, and fell to the floor.

Angel quickly stood up straight and smirked, quite physically able, aside from the cuts. The pink of her fur seemed to peel away, revealing dull gray fur beneath, and dull, charcoal eyes. She reached inside her mouth and removed a small metal tube from between her cheek and teeth, and dropped it to the floor. An orange liquid still dripped from it.

"Stitch!" Lilo shouted, and tried to run toward him. But four green rope like appendages wrapped themselves around her shoulders and pulled her back.

"No!" emerald shouted. "You'll only get killed."

"You will all die either way." Hamsterveil interrupted. "It only a matter of when."

Gantu growled something unintelligible, clenching both his fists and eyes. At that moment the floating monitor turned toward him. Sapphire eyed very closely the happening.

"Is there something you wish you say?" Hamsterviel asked.

"No." Gantu grumbled.

"Good. I would hate to have to tranquilize you as well." Hamsterviel's monitor turned back toward the rest of them. "Take the human girl hostage."

The Angel clone glanced over at a Sparky clone and snapped her fingers. The Sparky, without glancing back at her, in a flash hurled itself toward Lilo and wrapped its elongated body around her A flash of light and a jolt of electricity was sent through Lilo. She shrieked and then fell unconscious.

"Try anything and she dies!" Hamsterviel yelled.

"He can't do anything!" Sapphire suddenly shouted. "He can't command the clones! Only 624 can do that!"

Gantu raised his eyebrow. He thought for only a moment, and then drew his blaster and pointed it at the Angel.

"Gantu!" Hamsterviel screamed. This was the very first time in a long time any of them had heard him in his usual irate, shrieking voice. "What are you doing! I command you at once to stop! I will have you tortured unfathomably if you do not obey my command right now!"

"No." Gantu relied calmly. "You've gone too far this time."

"You don't even know the half of it." Emerald added. "That's not even Hamsterviel your talking to."

"What!?"

"I knew it." 625 muttered under his breath.

"At least, not the one you know." Emerald continued. "He's contacting you from twenty years in the future."

"The future?" Gantu muttered.

"In his future, Hamsterviel is dictator of the Federation. He killed all the other experiments and used their clones to seize power. He then destroyed this planet, and every living thing on it."

Gantu squeezed his eyes shut and his hand trembled as he held his blaster toward the Angel.

"And think of it Gantu." Hamsterviel added. "You always hated this planet anyway, and the experiments. If I am not mistaken, you called them affronts to nature. Help me now, and you will forever be rid of both. As dictator of the Federation, I can give you power you've never dreamed of. Anything you can ever desire, I can make yours with a word."

"Don't believe him." Sapphire interrupted. "I know what happened to you. You ended up as Hamsterviel's errand boy on his flagship, always given the worst of all jobs. You had a device surgically implanted that he would use to torture you if you ever complained."

Gantu grumbled. He opened his eyes and stared down at the Angel. His eyes were empty, hollow of any feeling, at least at first glance. But staring deep into them one would find a kind of unmatched anger. The Angel saw it immediately. She began to walk back.

"I don't know what to believe anymore." Gantu grumbled. "Only that I won't be toyed with like this any longer."

Gantu pulled the trigger. Te hull was engulfed in a flash of light and the sound of thunder. Everyone had to close and shield his or her eyes from the blast. That moment seemed like an hour to everyone. When the flash was gone and ears were no longer ringing, they all looked toward the spot that had been fired on. Where the Angel used to be, was now just a burned and blackened hole in the floor.

Gantu swung his arm around and fired at the monitor. Another flash of light, another thundercrack, and when everyone came to, the monitor as well was gone.

Gantu holstered his blaster. He turned around and looked at the scene around him. Stitch and 625 both lay on either side of him both groaning, limp, and barely able to move their bodies. The red experiment was still being held by the Kixx, also groaning and limp. Lilo was still being held unconscious, a Sparky coiled around her. The other two experiments he didn't recognize stood both staring at him in amazement. But the strangest thing of all, the gray mockeries of the other experiments were no longer moving. Not only were they not moving, they weren't twitching, or blinking, and one could barely even tell that they were breathing. What's more, they hadn't reacted in the slightest to the recent events.

"What happened?" Gantu asked.

"They can only do what 624 commands them to do." Sapphire answered. "Without her they might as well be statues."

"How did you know?" Gantu asked again.

"It was a hunch. I just saw how Hamsterviel had to order 624 to order the clones, and I thought maybe he couldn't do it himself. In those few seconds I calculated the odds of my being right at fifty three point two seven percent. Honestly I don't think I've ever acted on such narrow margins of success before."

"But why would he do something like that?"

"As far as I can figure, maybe he was worried that if he could control them directly, and the present Hamsterviel was somehow able to contact you, he might gain control of them."

Gantu shook his head. "I still don't know what to believe. But whatever those things are, I'll dispose of each and every one of them myself."

"Can we go?" Emerald asked.

Gantu nodded his head. He pressed a button on the wall and the ramp lowered into the pond outside. Emerald went about prying Lilo from the grip of the Sparky, and Ruby from the grip of the Kixx. She carried Ruby and Stitch down the ramp outside, while Sapphire carried Lilo.

As Sapphire reached the bottom of the ramp, he looked back up at Gantu. Gantu looked right back at him. After a moment, Emerald also looked up at Gantu. They both knew from the look he gave them; he was very, very tired. He needed to rest.


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Author Notes:** At last I've completed chapter twenty, not only on half the time scale of chapter nineteen, but as a far longer and vastly superior chapter to nineteen. In case you can't tell, I was quite dissatisfied with the last one. But hopefully this makes up for it.

* * *

The world was a blur. He couldn't really be sure about anything, except for the horrible taste in his mouth. It tasted the same way oven cleaner smelled. He knew that was the cause of his condition because as he breathed in the fumes wafting through his mouth the confusion got worse, and as he breathed out it got slightly better. 

No, there was something else he was sure of. He was sure that he saw her. He couldn't remember exactly how or under what circumstances, but he remembered that he saw her. Or did he? She was there, he saw her, touched her, smelled her, but there was something else about it all. He remembered something about being deceived. He saw someone, touched someone, smelled someone, but was it really her? Someone told him it was a deception, that much he knew, but who it was or how they figured he couldn't understand, at least not in the state he was in, with the whole world in slow motion and a perpetual motion blur.

His head was just as degraded as his sight, and he couldn't move his limbs. He could barely move anything at all. He tried to speak but barely move his lips, much less utter a sound. Even his breathing and heartbeat was frighteningly slow, though with how he was at the moment, it wasn't possible for him to be frightened, although he was very annoyed at barely being able to move or think.

What was happening right now? He felt rhythmic thuds against his chest and stomach and the sensation or being rattled back and forth. From dark everything suddenly went light, the temperature rose, and he could feel mist spraying against him. It took him several minutes to realize he was being carried over someone's shoulder, something that would've come instantly to anyone else.

But even with the shaking and hitting and the brightness and the spray of mist, his bizarrely slow breathing and heartbeat toll. He could no longer keep his eyes open. As soon as light turned black, he was unconscious. He did not dream.

An unknown time later, he first became aware of the existence of his extremities. He tried to wriggle them but could only muster a few twitches. After some time he became aware that he was breathing. Maybe if he started to breath faster than whatever was happening would happen faster. It did. The body began moving slowly, and then quickly, and then his eyes opened.

At first he saw nothing but a bit light blur above with two smaller blue and cinnamon blurs to the sides. But after a few seconds, it all cleared up.

Stitch was lying back against a patch of grass. The sky was partly cloudy. The direct sun was blocked making it nice to step outside the shade, but otherwise it was bright. Nearer objects came into focus. There were two faces staring down at him just barely concerned, Lilo and Sapphire.

Stitch's limbs felt like wood. Flexing them he swore they would crack, but they didn't. After a while they started to feel like flesh again.

"Gaba?" Stitch asked.

"He's Okay." Lilo responded, though to Sapphire and not Stitch. It was a bit irritating.

"You were sedated." Sapphire answered Stitch directly. "The clone of 624 used some kind of strange, long chain alcohol on you, over a hundred times more potent than ethanol. Jumba had to inject you with a crazy drug cocktail so you wouldn't wake up feeling like you were dying."

Stitch stared dumbfounded at Sapphire for a moment. What the hell was he talking about? Oh yeah! That was it! He had seen Angel, his Angel. He hadn't seen her in almost eight months. And every tie he thought about her he was overcome with the desire to skulk down into the living room and spend the rest of his dreary life watching mind numbing TV shows. But he never let on to anyone else about that.

But it didn't matter anymore because he'd seen her! She was there in front of him! She beconned him to her, and then she kissed him. At that moment he wasn't quite sure if he was lucidly awake, hallucinating, or just dreaming. She smelled like she did in his fantasies.

No… there was more. Sapphire was there, so was Lilo, Emerald, Ruby, Gantu, 625, and some horrid future incarnation of Dr. Hamsterviel. And then there were the gray, lifeless robots imitating other experiments… or at least that's what they seemed like.

Words came from afar. He was being deceived. That's when he knew, it was wrong that Angel smelled so delectable. Last he knew, she smelled a few steps away of being tortured and wasting away in her own filth. That was not Angel. But by then it was too late. The liquid sprayed into his throat from some tiny canister hidden inside her jaws. Then it was all over.

"Stitch remember." He whispered. "Gaba happen… uhh, after?"

Lilo sighed and closed her eyes briefly. Stitch was unsure if it was relief at seeing him or that she just didn't like having to tell what was probably going to be a very long story.

"We found out" Lilo started. "that only the Angel clone could tell the other clones to do stuff. I guess Hamsterviel didn't want to do that himself because he was afraid of our Hamsterviel getting control of them. Well, as soon as we found that out, Gantu blasted her away! And then Emerald and Sapphire, they brought us back here. They saved your life."

That wasn't very long. The previous gesture must have been relief.

Wait a second; Emerald and Sapphire saved his life? Stitch shut his eyes tight and pursed his lips together, it was all he could do the keep from growling. His legs felt like deadweight, but his hands were still sure enough to grab pieces of ground and squeeze them hard enough to form sandstone if he kept it up for more than a week. Of all the people who could've come to his rescue in his one helpless moment, why did it have to be them? The answer was clear, there was no one else there who could. But now he owed them his gratitude, and that was not a good feeling.

Stitch stood up quickly, almost enough to knock Lilo and Sapphire back, who sat back to avoid what would barely miss them. Grumbling nonsense under his breath, and still clutching the pieces of dirt, Stitch walked away, not caring to where.

It wasn't until this point Stitch even realized where he was. He paid no attention to the smells at first, but the sights tipped him off to do so. Both told him he was in the small park just behind his house. A pond to his left, a thin strip of forest to his right, and he stood in a grassy clearing in between, at the edge of a cliff, or at least it was a cliff to someone two and half feet tall. He stood leaning against it in the shade with his arms folded.

Lilo and Sapphire's eyes followed him all the way there, and still looked at him as if asking what just happened. Stitch turned his own eyes away toward something else. Nani was at the other end of the park, sitting on a bench less than fifty feet from the border of their property. Watching Nani sit and watch other people wasn't too interesting. A little further back, within their property, Jumba walked circles around Pleakly babbling about something or other while Pleakly merely nodded and smiled back in utter confusion, and tried not to become dizzy. That wasn't interesting either. But near the tree line to the right, Emerald and Kelvin sat next to each other. Emerald hand all six of her tendrils not quite wrapped around him and leaned into him. Stitch remembered hearing something about them in the future. The details weren't entirely clear, thanks to the sedative, but this at least was interesting.

Stitch pointed one ear in their direction. He could barely discern what they said from the distance and with the background noise, but he instantly recognized that it was all being spoken in Tantalog, which made it easier for him.

Kelvin decided it was best not to answer anything Emerald asked, for the instant she was finished with one, she would spurt out another, and he didn't understand any of them too well anyway.

Emerald began her rant, her voice having the inflection of a yell but the substance of a wheeze. _"I mean, you spend seven years of your life trying to achieve something. When you finally get it, how can you give it up? It's the hardest thing you've ever had to achieve. And then you learn that all you achieved was becoming a callous bitch? But how the hell do you give it up? Because if you do, that's means you've just wasted seven years."_

Kelvin sat motionless against the draping paper bark tree, not daring to open his mouth. It didn't matter though. Emerald pressed her face against his arm to muffle the sound of a sudden scream.

Kelvin jerked and turned his head toward her, gritting his teeth. In that moment her tendrils had clenched him hard enough to bruise his muscles, something not even tumbling down a steep, rocky hill would normally be able to do. But he didn't make a sound other than a tiny, inaudible whine.

As Emerald lifted her head back out form Kelvin's arm she looked as if she'd just been badgered to wake up. She immediately felt heat on the portions of Kelvin's body her tendrils rested on, not from his abilities, but from slight swelling. She must've constricted him tighter than she'd imagined.

"I'm sorry." Emerald whispered.

Kelvin shook his head.

Emerald leaned forward and looked into Kelvin's eyes. She glanced back at the house in the distance with one raised eyebrow before looking back at him.

Kelvin shrugged his shoulders and gave a single nod.

They both stood up and slowly walked back toward the house.

There was nothing more there for Stitch to see. He needed to look somewhere else. Sapphire stood on the bench of a picnic table in the middle of the clearing. In that time it seems he'd went and grabbed Jumba's ovoid laptop from wherever it was, brought it out here, and was now typing on it at a blurry pace. That was kind of interesting, but not much.

Nani was now lying on the bench with one arm extended beneath her head. It wouldn't be at all interesting to watch her fall asleep. Jumba and Pleakly were nowhere to be seen. The only thing left was Ruby, who had come out into the open during the time he watched Emerald and Kelvin, and was now running on two feet, chasing Lilo through the grassy clearing. They both laughed as ruby tried to catch up with Lilo and smear some orangeish mush from her hands on Lilo's hair.

That was certainly interesting, but it was also something Stitch definitely did not like watching. He knew instantly what that mush was, it was squished star fruit from one of the numerous trees in the park. He knew it because Lilo used to do this with him, though after the first three times she made him run on only two feet as he was so much faster than her when on four or six. Lilo spent so much time with them, depended on them to save him, and now she was playing one of their favorite games with one of them.

Stitch's body tensed up, making him involuntarily stand up straight. His muscles tightened solid, and his face was pulled back so tight his eyes watered. Then all at once he went limp. His arms and ears fell own to his sides. His muscles turned to rubber and his back slid down the edge of the cliff until he was sitting. It was revolting looking at that image, but for the very first time, Stitch realized there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

He watched more, and remembered something. He'd cooperated with one of them. It was on Gantu's ship. It would take almost an hour to remember all the details from the effects of the sedative, but he was sure he cooperated expertly with one of them in order to get to his goal. He didn't know how to feel about it, or perhaps his mood had just been spent. Either way, he knew if he hadn't cooperated with them, Ruby wouldn't be there playing with Lilo now. It was a delightful thought. But then he realized, if he hadn't cooperated with them, Lilo wouldn't be there at all. Again he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

He watched more. Lilo laughed and zigzagged about in the same way that she did when she played this game with him. Indeed, Ruby acted very much like he did when that happened as well. For a moment, Stitch could almost swear he was looking at his own reflection, and then realized it was color reversed and larger than him.

Lilo certainly looked happy running from a smear of mashed star fruit. Given the choice for Lilo between happy and dead, Stitch suddenly squinted and dropped his mouth open in the realization that he was actually grateful, not because etiquette required it, but because he wanted to be.

Stitch had only a split second to ponder this before Lilo disappeared from sight. Shaking his head to snap himself back to the here and now, Stitch easily deduced from Ruby's position near it, that Lilo ran back onto their property and hid behind a rusted carbon steel engine torn out of a seventies VW beetle in the back of the house.

But Ruby knew where she was. Ruby laid all four hands on the old engine and with barely a grunt, ripped it in half. Behind the sound of sheering metal and rusted shrapnel, Ruby found Lilo balled up on the ground staring up at her mashed fruit covered hand.

Seeing Ruby so easily rip apart such a huge mazework of steel was too much for Stitch. He could do it himself, but with a lot more strain than it took her. Was it possible that she was even stronger than him? He could let that happen. Stitch's body exploded with energy.

Just as Ruby was about to bring her sticky, mush coated hand down on Lilo.

"Stitch, Ruby, chokadzu naga!"

Ruby spun around to see a sneering, panting Stitch inches from her face. She blinked confusedly at him, neither of them noticing Lilo sneaking away.

Stitch shook his head. It didn't matter whether or not he liked it, he shouldn't be rude to someone who saved his life, or even someone whom he was told saved his life.

"I mean… Gabama Ruby chokadzu?" Stitch reiterated.

"How strong am I?" Ruby responded still a bit confused. "uhh… I don't know exactly, but stronger than you."

"Naga!" Stitch barked.

"Ih!" ruby barked right back.

"Arm wrestle!" Stitch yelled at her. Ruby was now even more confused.

"Arm wrestle?" Ruby replied. "But you've never been able to beat me since I was six!"

"Arm wrestle!" Stitch yelled again.

Ruby shrugged her shoulders. She looked down at her hand and shook it several times at a bush. The mush flew off her hand, as much as could be seen at a glance anyway. She extended her arm to Stitch, who clasped it with his own.

Stitch nodded his head and they both struggled. Ruby's face was pulled tight and her teeth clenched. But Stitch appeared in even worse condition. His face was tight and teeth clenched, and they were also both jittering. Stitch expended every reserve of strength his body could tap, until he felt like his arm was going to break. But it was no use, Ruby was steadily lowering his arm, and his shoulder, to the ground. After just more than ten seconds, the back of Stitches hand touched the dirt.

As soon as his hand was released, Stitch turned around, pulled on his ears and shrieked before running off. Ruby was even more confused.

Stitch didn't even know where he was going, and after a short distance stopped and looked around sniffing and with eyes watered. He was a short distance from the bench where Sapphire still typed frantically on the ovoid laptop. He looked up at the laptop and saw something amazing.

Sapphire was using the laptop's number processing program to map, manipulate, correlate, and interlink a number of fractals and probabilities, each with over two hundred variables. Stitch instantly recognized these formulas as temporal mechanics, but he could only half understand them. He could understand each formula individually, and given a few seconds even calculate it to a solution, but the finer details of how each formula interacted with the others, and they with them, and how this formed group and hybrid interactions were truly beyond him. Sapphire was playing with mathematics that not even he could understand.

"Queesta!"

Sapphire was so absorbed in his calculating that the sound caused him to jump straight up into the air and land on his back on the bench. The ovoid laptop dropped to the grass and flickered the screen.

Sapphire sat up and saw Stitch staring with a quite forlorn face at the screen of the sideways laptop. He jumped down and righted it before turning to him.

"Dad?" Sapphire asked. "What's wrong?"

Stitch turned away and lowered his ears.

"First, Stitch Ruby chokadzu, and then Stitch Sapphire chonota."

Sapphire blinked. "Well, if it helps, Ruby can't do high school algebra, you're at least twenty times stronger than I am."

"Naga." Stitch groaned.

Sapphire looked back down at his formulas. He sat down.

"You know Stitch, you shouldn't see this as a contest. You are our father. Your DNA gave us our powers, most of them. Ruby's strength, my intellect, that's all your creation, in more ways than one."

Sapphire did have a point. If it was his own blood that gave these beings such extraordinary abilities, he should be proud of that. He wasn't, but he knew he should be. At the very least didn't feel as bad as he did a moment ago. Sapphire seems to be able to sense that, if only because Stitch made it so obvious by lifting his head and perking his ears.

"What about Emerald?" Stitch asked.

"She mostly takes after her mother, though she still has plenty of your abilities, infrared vision, enough strength to lift over a thousand times her own weight, and she can take a three fifty seven magnum to her gut with only a small bruise."

"Sapphire?" Stitch asked. There was no answer. "Gabacha, your mother?"

"Angel of course."

Those were the words he craved hearing. He suspected as much already, looking at Emerald. Her tendrils were almost a perfect combination of Stitch's quills and Angel's antennae. But Angel was on some distant asteroid, kept constantly on the edge of critical condition, and only a few people in the galaxy knew where she was. This meant Angel wasn't going to stay there forever. She would come back to him one day, and she would be at least decently healthy. In that instant, whatever tension built up in Stitch's body suddenly left. For the first time in several days, Stitch felt good.

Stitch turned around and looked at Sapphire. Knowing that these beings were not only his children, but Angel's as well, something happened. For some strange reason, they no longer seemed threatening.

Stitch gave a weak smile to Sapphire.

"Taka." Stitch whispered.

At that moment, something hit Stitch on the top of his head. It was soft, it was wet, and it exploded on impact. Stitch would've thought it was a water balloon it weren't for the sweet smell. As a piece of goldenrod goop fell onto the tip of his nose, Stitch realized it was star fruit.

Stitch looked up to see Ruby sitting on top of the table pointing down at him and laughing, all four of her arms extended, and the three free ones all clutching star fruit.

Everything else blacked out at that moment. Ruby was the only thing Stitch could see. Stitch's eyes dilated behind their tinted coating. He snarled and snapped and jumped up after her with anger he very seldom felt.

Ruby leapt back off the table an ran, laughing the whole time, oblivious as to what was really happening to Stitch as he chased her growling and snarling. Sapphire was taken aback by this momentarily. But soon regained his composure.

"Are you sure she'll be alright?"

Sapphire jumped again, but much softer this time. He turned his head to see Lilo standing over his shoulder looking at Stitch chasing after Ruby, sometimes being pelted with yet another star fruit, which only seemed to make him angrier.

"Ruby's faster than my dad, so there's nothing to worry about." Sapphire answered, nodding his head.

Sapphire looked back at the ovoid laptop. Almost two dozen formulas of fractals and probabilities connected with each other in countless ways producing a single, massive hybrid formula, one for the sole purpose to calculating the odds that certain things will happen given certain circumstances. He'd finished the whole thing just before Stitch interrupted him. Now he had the chance to see it all as one and figure out what it all means. What it means was that he had to tell Lilo more.

"It's a good thing you're here." Sapphire mumbled.

"Why?" Lilo asked.

"Because there's still more things you need to know." Sapphire never turned away from the formulas as he spoke. "It's about our mother."

"Yeah, I was kind of wondering who it was."

"624."

Lilo smirked. "I should've guessed."

"But right here in the past she's being kept locked up by Hamsterviel. Given recent discoveries, I've calculated the odds of her ever being rescued with our current situation at less than a hundred to one."

"Meaning?" Lilo asked.

"Meaning," Sapphire answered. "If Angel ever is going to be saved, you have to know a little bit about how it'll happen. So remember this. It's going to be seven months from now, on November ninth. Something will happen that will force Hamsterviel to send Angel back to Gantu's ship. The day after that, is when she'll be rescued. But you can't let Stitch or anyone else know any of this, and when the time comes, you can't let on that you know any of this. Despite my recent discovery, I still think there are some future events left untold."

Lilo nodded.

She and Sapphire looked on toward the end of the park. Ruby was out in the open wandering the grassy clearing. Stitch was no where in sight.

Stitch was still in the park. He sat up in the branches of a large paper bark tree looking down at what was happening. He watched Ruby pry her way through the grass and look all around for him.

Trying to chase after Ruby so he could strangle her was too much for him. Not only was she stronger than he was, but she was also faster, and she never seemed to run out of energy. When Stitch's energy ran out, so did his anger, and he snuck by her to climb up a tree just so he could rest, no longer caring about her or what she did to him.

Whenever he'd played this game with Lilo, she was barely ever able to hit him. He only remembered her doing so once or twice. But then again Lilo never took cheap shots, unlike the one he'd received so many minutes ago. Stitch knew then and there that he had to make Ruby pay for what she did to him. The thought was truly shocking for Stitch, because it was not being driven by anger. The truth was, he enjoyed the idea. But how could he do that when she was so much more physically able than he was? And why did she keep wandering around the ground when she could just climb a tree?

That's when it hit him. Stitch did have one physical advantage over Ruby. He could cling to vertical surfaces, she couldn't.

Stitch eyed his surroundings. A few trees down was a small star fruit tree nestled between two palms. Silently as possible, he started for the tree. He climbed from tree to tree, from paper bark, to umbrella, to bird of paradise, and then reached out and grabbed a handful of star fruit from one of the smallest species of tree in the park. Stitch made his way back finally, but careful to rustle the leaves of the umbrella tree before returning to his paper bark.

Ruby immediately perked an ear and turned it to the sound. She ran on all fours toward the sound. It led her to a large, gnarled umbrella tree She looked up at it gripping her own mush nervously.

Then from the right, four of them hit her right on the head. The right side of her face and ear was now completely drenched in mashed star fruit. From out of no where, Stitch dropped out of the adjacent paper bark tree. He landed on his back laughing hysterically and pointing at ruby with both left hands. Ruby was then and there in too much shock to respond with anything but wide eyes and ears stiffened straight back.

Both Lilo and Sapphire saw the entire thing. They turned toward each other. Lilo smiled contently, but Sapphire was confused.

"I was not expecting that." Sapphire said, shaking his head.

"He's been warming up to you three for a while now." Lilo replied, nodding her. "You're just not very good at paying attention."

"I'm fine at paying attention… just not to other people."

The day went on into the evening. But beyond the point told, not much interesting happened. Stitch would alternate between playing with Ruby and talking about any random subject that came up with Sapphire. Lilo stood back and watched with a slight smile mostly. Nani alternating between napping and watching, and Jumba and Pleakly had long since gone elsewhere. But they all gathered during the sunset to watch the impending storm over the peak of their property, the stone circle with the hammock and torches.

Jumba and Pleakly stood side by side at the left while Nani and Lilo stood side by side on the right. Stitch, Ruby, and Sapphire all sat in the hammock, all fairly close to each other.

Steps were heard on the stone walkway behind them. Only a few heads turned around to look. They saw Kelvin and Emerald walk up and take their place between Pleakly and Lilo. Their fur was damp.

"Your wet." Lilo spoke softly.

"We had to take a… we had to take showers." Emerald responded.

"Those were long showers." Nani spoke up, not really paying attention. "You're gonna run up the water bill."

They stood for a minute more in silence. The storm was now as far away from Ni'ihau as Ni'ihau was from Kaua'i. Even in the light of the sunset the storm was a charcoal color. There seemed to be no tops to the clouds, and what looked to be paint strikes straight up and down from the distance were even more impenetrable than the clouds themselves.

"It's going to hit before sunrise tomorrow." Pleakly said.

"Forty inches in thirty hours." Nani mumbled. "Even for Kaua'i that's unusual. We only get a storm like this here once every other year."

"Storm is being least of worries." Jumba grunted.

"How are we going to top Hamsterviel?" Lilo asked.

Sapphire took a deep breath. "Hamsterviel flies the Zodiac, it's the Federation's flagship twenty years from now. It's more than fifteen kilometers long. A ship that big can only safely exit a warp jump five light hours from a star as big as the sun. That would put him half way between Jupiter and Saturn. From that point it'll take the Zodiac seventeen hours to reach Earth. We'll only see it five hours later when the light reaches us. We'll then take Jumba's ship to intercept it, I can modify it on the way so we won't be detected. It'll take us four hours to reach the ship. From there we'll have eight hours get on board, activate the self destruct, and get the hell out."

"That's a tight schedule." Pleakly exclaimed.

"So that's why you showed yourselves in the first place." Nani said. "You needed us to let you take the ship."

"We knew you'd get the Federation involved if it just turned up missing." Sapphire replied.

From then until they went back inside, none of them said another word. They all stayed there and watched the encroaching storm until there was no light left in the sky.


	21. Chapter Twenty One

**Author Notes:** I'm so incredibly sorry for the month long hiatus on updates for this story. I don't know what the hell happened to me, but every time I tried to sit down to write something for this I found nothing coming out of my fingers. I could stare for hours at the few paragraphs I'd written thus far and think of nothing further to write. But just today all tat seemed to come to an end. today alone I wrote seven pages, finishing a chapter that started out a month ago as only a couple paragraphs. I can only hope this continues.

**Story Notes:** in regards to a certain map, every name you'll see written on that map actually refers to a character, place, or creature in a fantasy horror mythos I'm creating based on personal accounts of other peoples nightmares. the more astute among you will catch the reference to the other mythos which served a great inspiration for my own.

* * *

The buzzing has long since become inaudible, at least to Sapphire who'd been hearing it for the past six hours. For all that time he'd been sitting on the couch in the living room, the one with the pink cushions, hardwood back, and bamboo armrests. It wasn't the most comfortable thing, but to a creature as small as Sapphire, a few well placed pillows would turn it into a recliner.

That's what he looked like he was one, leaning against pillows stacked behind him arms on smaller pillows stacked on either side, feet fully extended but not even reaching the end of the couch. Sapphire looked out toward the coffee table in front of the couch, and toward the small ovoid laptop and its dull blue screen that gave off that particular buzzing he no longer heard. Scrolling down that screen in three separate columns were innumerate mathematical formulas in nearly every major branch from common algebra to quantum field theory. But Sapphire didn't see numbers or variables or functions or graphs. All he saw was… specks of hydrogen, cosmic rays, radiation spikes, the occasional bit of germ sized space dust, and the background EM noise. It was all very much worth Sapphire's attention, as was indicated by glazed over, his half closed eyes and the tiny string of saliva dripping down the corner of his mouth.

Sapphire blinked at last in how long he couldn't tell. He glanced up from the screen of the Laptop. He'd been staring at it, unblinking, for so long that the world now looked like a spinning, blinking TV screen with the tint turned all the way toward the weird end. He rubbed his eyes. His arms were stiff and shaky, again from the six hours of total motionlessness. He tried to stand up only to find that his whole body had undergone the same stiffening and shakes as his arms. He reach up as high as he could, trying to stretch what little could be stretched from such a meager posture. His arms and legs tingled and he collapsed back down into his former posture, though now with some feeling back in his body.

Sapphire wiped his mouth with his paw and looked out toward the big window across from he couch. The rain was so thick it didn't even sound like it came down in drops anymore. It now just sounded like static white noise, albeit blaring static white noise. The visibility that night was virtually zero, even with flashlights and street lamps, at least to a human anyway. Sapphire could see more though. He could see small chairs tumbling across the ground, the giant leaves of palms and birds of paradise whipping and twirling through the air, and the occasional floppy square tumbling slowly to the ground -shingles being torn off the roof-. Occasionally some small object like a shingle or a giant leaf slammed against the window with a thud. Other times lightning would strike so close that the window would flash and the power would flicker for an instant. After the first few hours of this nobody jumped at these things anymore. Stitch and Ruby even sat next to each other on the windowsill looking out at the storm only inches from the barrier protecting them from it.

Sapphire went back to staring at the readouts on the computer screen, looking for the telltale signs of a warp jump of something weighing over a million tons, the surefire sign of the arrival of the Zodiac in the solar system.He tuned out the conversation taking place in the kitchen.

It was there that Nani and Lilo were at a standoff. Each one leaning forward toward the other with one arm out front and the other swept back, with one foot forward digging as hard as possible into the floor, and the other dragging behind, barely touching it, and both trying their damndest to make sure the other was never able to get a word out.

"You know what that's called Nani?" Lilo shouted. "That's called hypocrisy! That's called double standards!"

"It would be," Nani shouted back. "If they were the same thing, but they're not."

"What do you mean not the same thing?" Lilo shouted right back. "Didn't I risk my life every time I went out to catch another experiment? You let me do that!"

"It ain't just a matter of risk and no risk Lilo, there's levels of risk! This one has too much."

"How's it different!?"

Nani stood back up straight. She put her hands on her back and bent backwards trying to get out the kinks from leaning in toward Lilo for so long. She breathed deeply as soon as she righted herself.

"You, Stitch, and Jumba, against one experiment at a time is a risk I'm willing to let you take. And I know Stitch's first priority is always your safety. That and you both know this island like the back of your hands, so you're always at the advantage.

"But this is totally different! Going onto an alien ship, big enough to be its own island, not knowing what you're going to go up against, not even knowing what you're looking for! That's too much."

"It's not too much" Lilo shouted again. "and I know more about this situation than anyone!"

"Oh really? How much do you really know about this, psychotic rat, as a person I mean? Do you know how he thinks? How much could you really know about what he did in the future, what with it taking less than ten minutes to hear the story? Can you honestly tell me what kinds of things the rat thing has waiting or you up there? What he's capable of?"

Lilo stood like a statue for several seconds. She blinked and straightened back up, looked down at the floor and sighed.

"No." She whispered.

"That's how it's different." Nani said nonchalantly. "Whenever you and Stitch go up against an experiment, you know exactly what you're getting into. But here, you have no idea. And unlike the experiments, the rat can't reasoned with, and can't be rehabilitated. The only thing he wants is for you, and all of us, to be dead."

Lilo blinked and looked up, not quite shocked, as the lights flickered. A split second later the roar of thunder echoed through the house, rattling the windows and vibrating the floors.

"They keep getting closer." Lilo whispered.

"I wonder if the dome'll get hit?" Nani talked to herself.

Lilo looked back at Nani. She stiffened slightly at the words. Her hands were clenched loosely while her face was pulled tight and her lips closed hard.

"I think I'll sleep in the laundry room tonight." Lilo muttered. "Is it okay if I dumped all the clothes into a pile for me to sleep on?"

"Sure, go ahead." Nani muttered right back, only half paying attention.

The argument and ensuing mumbling left more than one party distracted.

Emerald sat op top of the bookcase next to he front door. A black cordless phone was held to her right ear by two tendrils, while another two tendrils tried to plug her left from the noise coming from the kitchen.

"What?" Emerald squeaked into the phone. "Okay now I think their done."

Emerald took her tendrils out of her ear and shook her head briefly.

"I was saying about the satellites." She continued. "… what do you mean what about them?… … Well the Zodiac is over fifteen kilometers long, and I need you to somehow make sure out satellites don't see it… … I know it's an off chance but it's not one in a hundred, hell it isn't even one in ten! That's too much of a risk to take… … Well yeah they'll find out eventually, but when that happens the blockade will be there to stop them from doing any damage, and there's no telling what'll happen if they see it today… … What do you mean you have no influence? … … Why the hell didn't you tell me that in the first place!?… … Damnit, this is neither the time nor place for ego stroking!… … Well do you know anyone who does?… … Well I know exactly what he can do; he can send a power surge through the network… … Would it be more costly than the world being shown footage of an alien ship the size of a large city coming right at them?… … I don't know, tell him to tell them it was a solar flare or something… … Of course no one'll believe it, but that's not the point… … The point is to close the investigation ASAFP… … Well let them. At the very least no one'll get pictures of the Zodiac, and that's the important thing… … Well the amateur pictures can be dismissed easy enough… … No need, we have a cloaking device… … Then recruit them or something… … I don't know, find some way of dealing with them… … Has anyone ever told you how much of an ass hole you are!?… … Well I'd just like to be added to the list… … Thanks Cobra."

Emerald pulled the phone away from her ear and pushed the power button with her hand. She dropped the phone from her tendrils, which hit the corner of the bookcase before falling to the floor causing several high pitched smacks to alert those in the house.

Emerald dropped her face into her hands and wrapped her tendrils around herself. She shivered from nervous fatigue before bringing her feet up off the sides of the bookcase and sitting cross-legged.

Emerald jumped ever so slightly as she felt something large on her shoulder. She unwrapped herself and looked up to the side to see Nani staring down at her.

"What's wrong?" Nani asked.

"I can't believe I just talked to him like that." Emerald whispered back.

"So what?" Nani jeered. "I talk like that to people all the time."

"No wonder you can't get a good job." Emerald mumbled. The instant after she squeaked and covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes pulled wide open. "Again." She sighed through her fingers. "I haven't acted like this since I was seven!"

"Well is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Nani asked.

"I'm not sure." Emerald answered, slowly shaking her head. "I need to think about it."

Emerald looked around on the bookcase but found nothing of interest. She stood up and hopped off the bookcase, falling only a foot before her tendrils caught the floor and slowly lowered her down. She looked up into the bookcase this time finding, among other things, a stack of printer paper and a cup full of pens and pencils, she grabbed both in her tendrils and turned around. Her arms folded and head down in thought, Emerald walked over to the corner of the room and sat laid down on her stomach next to the TV stand. Pulling out a pen and sheet of paper, she started to draw irregular grids with blocks and lines and circles and stuff. Soon into her efforts, it was clear Emerald was drawing a map, a map of some fictional town labeled as Las Aguilas in unnecessarily fancy cursive. The town revolved around a large tower in its center labeled the Tower of Mr. Showers. There was a massive, single story warehouse called the Forge of the Sorrow Fish. There was a mansion called Villa of Eli Rosario overlooking a youth center apparently also owned by him.

Soft pattering brought Emerald's gaze up to see Stitch just then sitting down next to her. Stitch looked down at his own clasped hands and their twiddling thumbs.

"Hi." Emerald said.

"Hello." Stitch answered, nodding his head. "Gaba Emerald Toka?"

"I'm just drawing a map." Emerald answered, going back to the paper.

"Gaba Ba-ba?"

"I don't know." Emerald shrugged. "It's just a place I'm making up off the top of my head. I don't even know what most of this stuff is supposed to be."

"Gabaga?"

Emerald blinked and breathed deep. "Well, drawing maps of strange places always helped me focus, kind of like meditation you know."

Stitch looked down at the map being created before his eyes. She'd clearly been doing this for many years. It looked just like one of those fantastic hand drawn maps found in fantasy novels, complete with the symbols of creatures and coats of arms and other stuff like that. Stitch sat down in front of the map, looking down at it, mesmerized by it.

"Umm… Emerald?" Stitch asked, briefly looking away. "What is future like?"

Emerald immediately stopped what she was doing and put her pen down. She blinked several times before answering.

"Well there's a lot of stuff I can't tell you." Emerald answered. "But I'll do my best with what I can. The future is… its very crowded. At least on the Hawaiian islands. Between the Birds of Paradise and the Federation Embassy, the island became a hub for billionaires and political conferences, even bigger than Geneva in the respect. Every day you have to fight your way through the crowds of xenophobic protesters just to get to work. But at least the school systems are some of the best in the world, what with all the money that goes through Kauai. Social services too. I seems they've solved Hawaii's economic crisis at the price of its quiet comfort. There's not much of that anymore on Hawaii. Thankfully the Birds of Paradise owns half the states wilderness as private sanctuaries."

Emerald looked up into the air while dropping the pen tip up onto the floor and catching it as it bounced back up.

"What about… Angel." Stitch asked.

Emerald grasped the pen. Before dropping it and letting roll in a half circle on the floor. "Oh, mom. That's one of the things I can't tell you much about."

"Tell me… what you can."

"Well," Emerald huffed. "She doesn't talk much. I guess its what the experience with Hamsterveil did to her, but she refuses to talk about it, except for your part in it that is. She still has nightmares about it twenty years into the future, and she says she'll have them the rest of her life. But she does seem happy, for the most part, especially when she's near you."

"What about, rescue?" Stitch asked.

"All I can tell you is, it's less than a year from now."

Stitch closed his eyes and smiled as his ears flopped down. It was one thing to have it implied that Angel would eventually be rescued, but it was quite another to have it stated directly. The implication only gave Stitch so much comfort. The doubt was still there, the fear. But to hear it directly said, Angel was going to be saved, did something rather strange to him. Stitch felt his muscles relax. He didn't even know that he was tense. Suddenly his body started aching and throbbing with mind numbing pain. Stitch collapsed onto his side shivering and clenching his teeth and eyes. How long had he been holding that tension for it to do this when he let it go? It was so long that he didn't realize he was holding it at all.

Stitch felt two rope like objects wrap tightly around his shoulder. He looked up to find Emerald standing over him with two tendrils reaching down.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

The pain started to subside, something that would take the rest of the day for most other creatures took mere seconds for him. When the pain was gone his body felt like rubber, an eerie though not entirely unpleasant sensation.

Emerald pulled Stitch back up to sitting.

"Ih." Stitch answered.

Stitch suddenly realized the strange thing that happened to him. Angel was now only in the back of his thoughts. For the first time in a long time, he was not concerned about her. Angel was only a passing thought, at least for the moment. And she would come and go from his mind as he pleased. It was like stopping a broken record that had been repeating in his head for the past year.

With this newfound freedom, Stitch's thoughts wandered somewhere else, toward his children. One of them was standing right above him. He looked at her curiously. He knew next to nothing about her. But at the same time, he wanted to do something with her that would be meaningful. He had no idea what that might be. The only thing he could think of was what was right in front of him.

Stitch looked down at the map and back up at Emerald. "Can I join?"

Emerald looked down at the map and back up at Stitch. "Sure."

Stitch flopped down onto his stomach opposite Emerald and grabbed a pen from the cup. The chatter between them grew faster and faster as they each drew more parts of the map, arguing over what they should be, what they should be named, and what they should look like. More places emerged on the map, a cave on the town outskirts called the Nest of the King Longlegs, an impossible maze of dirty alleys and gutters called the Zone of Jim Blair.

The chatter, all in Tantalog, drew the attentions of both Ruby and Sapphire. Both stared intently at Stitch and Emerald's newly unfolding map. They both smiled as they both instantly recognized what it was.

The chatter drew others as well. From the kitchen, Lilo entered the living room barefoot, holding a small bowel of pralines and cream ice cream. From the hallway, Pleakly entered in a dark blue nightgown rubbing his head. They all stared curiously at Emerald and Stitch, who were by then totally engrossed in the map they were drawing.

Lilo set her bowl on the shelf of the bookcase and walked over them.

"What are you doing?" Lilo asked.

"You're not going to get an answer out of them." A voice came from her side. "Not until their finished anyway."

Lilo turned around. It was emerald, still sitting on the windowsill. Ruby pushed herself off and wrapped her two right arms around Lilo's shoulder, guiding her away from Stitch and Emerald.

"What are they doing?" Lilo asked again, this time with a slight disagreement in her voice and eyes.

"When we were younger, Dad would draw the maps with us." Ruby answered.

"Maps of where."

"Anywhere, nowhere, we always made up the places we drew. Some of those maps got to be more complicated than some real maps we had."

Sapphire paid full attention to both the words between Stitch and emerald, and between Ruby and Lilo. He looked over toward Pleakly and hastily waved his hand toward him. Pleakly looked twice and then waddled over toward Sapphire. He looked at the laptop as Sapphire pointed toward it.

"Can you watch that while I'm busy?" Sapphire asked before hopping off the couch and walking brusquely toward Elerald and Stitch.

"Watch it!?" Pleakly yelled. "I don't even know what I'm looking for!"

"Tachions!" Sapphire yelled back. "Lots of them!"

"How am I supposed to know what they look like?"

"They'll be labeled!"

With that sapphire walked past Lilo and Ruby, briefly slowing to take the time to say, "We always thought he got us into that turns out it was the other way around."

Sapphire sat down aside Lilo and Ruby, immediately grabbing a pen from the cup and jotting down his own streets and landmarks on the ever growing map. The chatter immediately went three ways, and in seconds it was hard to tell only two people, let alone one were once drawing the map.

Ruby turned toward Lilo and smiled briefly before she too took off and took her place on the one free side of the map, her own pen in hand and her own additions slowly unfolding. Soon all four pens were drawing all at once on the single sheet of paper, often all on the same thing. All four of them rambled on at once in Tantalog, discussing at length what was to be drawn.

Lilo stared at them with a look of surprise and disappointment. This was one of the few times in her memory Stitch did something truly interesting without involving her. It was confusing at least, and distressing at most. She walked toward them fully intent on joining, even though she didn't know what it was they were doing. As she approached, three fingered hands grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. She struggled, trying to hit whatever it was that was behind her. It pried harder at her, which only made her struggle harder, until…

"Lilo stop it!"

Lilo did as Pleakly had commanded. She turned around giving him a perplexed look.

"Lilo," Pleakly said. "Just let them be for now."

"Why?" Lilo asked annoyed.

Pleakly sighed. "Because after this is all over, Stitch won't see his kids for the next five years. And even then it won't be until years later that he'll be able to play with them like that. Just give him the time, just this once."

Lilo looked back at Stitch, Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire. They babbled back and forth, often three at once, sometimes all laughing at something one of them said. The map kept growing. There was a swirl of energy atop the tower called the Portal to Realis. There was an icon of an athlete in tights named Ray the Runner, who sprinted along the outskirts of the town. There was a campus of huge buildings called Freak Hospital. There was a fenced off field of Olympic sized swimming pools filled with some vile muck called the Pupal Catalyst. They were totally engrossed in what they were doing. They weren't even aware of anything else around them.

Lilo remembered what Stitch was like when he first met those… not quite experiments. He hated them with a passion. She could never tell why, but everything they did, and even their mere presence, infuriated him. When he first discovered they were his children, he snapped into a kind of hatred she'd never seen in him before. But now, only days later, this happened. She knew Pleakly was right, and for once in situations like these, she didn't even want him to be wrong. Lilo smiled at the quartet by the TV stand.

"You should go to bed Lilo." Pleakly said.

Lilo nodded and wriggled her shoulders free of Pleakly's grip. She turned around and walked back into the kitchen, stopping to grab her bowel from the shelf of the bookcase.

Pleakly continued to look at them for a few more seconds before waddling to the couch and flopping himself down in front of the ovoid laptop, staring into the blue screen while impossible mathematical strings scrolled faster than his eye could register. He had no idea what the hell he was looking at, or looking for, only that it would be labeled 'Tachions'.

* * *

The room was dark. All that could be made out clearly were outlines of large shapes and he windows where the rain beat down mercilessly, sounding like the static of a TV on the wrong channel. A creak was barely audible. From the creak, came a crack of light from the adjacent room. I was just enough to make out what the room was like. There were blue and white checkered linoleum floors, strings tied across the ceilings, plain white cupboards across the upper walls, and of course, the washer and dryer.

Lilo pushed the laundry room door the rest of the way open with her shoulder. She loosely gripped her bowl in her hand that hung by her side. As she walked into the laundry room, Lilo reached with her other hand toward the wall beside her, above her head. Stumbling several times, her fingers found what they sought. With a click, the lights went on. Seconds later, they flickered from the surge of a bolt of lightning flashing through the windows. Lilo didn't wince at the lightning, merely blinking at the flash.

Lilo set her bowl down on the floor and closed the door with her foot. She walked over to the dryer and opened it. She pulled out its contents and dumped them onto the floor. Tossing clothes aside, Lilo found what she was looking for. A pair of black canvas retro sneakers, black sweat pants, a black long sleeved shirt, and a black winter cap. Lilo took off her green mumu, and put on the new outfit she'd selected.

Turning her head from place to place, Lilo eventually located the round tin of black shoe polish right in front of her, on he shelf above the washer and dryer. She climbed the dryer, using the open door as a stepstool, and grabbed the tin from the shelf. She twisted it open and smeared the corrosive smelling polish in streaks beneath her eyes. She left it on the shelf still open.

Lilo hopped off of the dryer and approached the back door. She looked up at it. The trees where convulsing in the wind and rain. The trip from here to the ship was not going to be pleasant. But Lilo verbalized her rationalizations.

"Sorry Nani," She said. "I'd never get over the regret if I didn't see this with my own eyes. But that's just something you couldn't understand."

Lilo grabbed the handle of the door. On twisting it, the door almost immediately flew open, nearly hitting Lilo in the face and sending her clamoring back. The water sprayed into the laundry room and onto Lilo. She wrapped her arms around herself from the cold, backed up a few feet, and dashed toward the door, grabbing the knob and pulling it shut as she ran outside.

* * *

The piece of paper was completely covered in scribbles and shapes and titles and pictures. Somehow, despite the mishmash of ideas and efforts of four different graphers, the map seemed somehow concise, as if it could be a real place in some fantasy horror author's mythos… or at least everything within it could be, it was doubtful they'd all be in the same place like that. But despite this, the town looked somehow fluid, like it was a real town that grew and shaped itself around the terrain as real towns did.

Stitch had a hard time getting over this as he held the new map above him as he lay on his back along the windowsill. It was less than five minutes into drawing that map with his children that it seemed as if it were something they'd always done.

Stitch set the map down on he windowsill behind him and folded his arms across his chest. He closed his eyes and smiled. It wasn't an intense smile like he did when he got excited or laughed. It was a very slight smile, something that barely registered as such. Stitch realized there was only one other time he was ever as content as he was then, and that was the very first time he ever went surfing with Lilo, and unlike then, this time it wouldn't end with a crisis. Stitch opened his eyes and leaned his head toward the inside of the room.

Emerald sat on the couch opposite Pleakly, with her nose in a quite large hardcover book pulled off the bookcase next to the front door. It was simply titled 'The Stand'. She would flip a page every five seconds, clearly able to read faster than any normal human, though still no where near as fast as himself. He thought to himself that maybe he should start reading novels, if nothing more than as a means to master written English.

Sapphire was wall asleep on his back on the chair, his arms and legs splayed out to the sides. His mouth hung open and his ear twitched every few seconds. Stitch giggled to himself at this.

Ruby sat right in front of the TV watching old anthropomorphic Saturday morning cartoons from the mid eighties. Her face was way too close to the screen for her own good.

Stitch turned his head toward the window and looked out into the storm. Simply knowing that they were there made him relaxed.

Another flash of lightning struck in the distance. Seconds later, the low rumbling came and engulfed the house.

Pleakly stared with his eye half open at the screen in front of him. His eye almost closed several times, but suddenly shot open at a startling sight. Pleakly sat up straight and stiffened his body.

"Sapphire?" Pleakly asked.

Sapphire snorted in his sleep.

"Sapphire!" Pleakly shouted.

Sapphire jumped up awake, feeling in front of him as if unable to see.

"Wha, Wh, what?" sapphire grumbled. "What the hell is it."

"It's saying tachions on this screen." Pleakly answered, pointing to the ovoid computer while looking at Sapphire."

"Tachions!?" Sapphire mumbled loudly, trying to wake himself up as fast as possible. "How many?"

"I don't know! I can't understand any of this! It just keeps saying tachions over and over again."

Sapphire shook his head and arms wildly trying to wake himself up fully. After several seconds of that, he blinked for several more seconds. He stood up and jumped from the chair straight onto the couch. Standing next to Pleakly he stared intently at the screen of Jumba's laptop. When he looked up, his immediate family had all stopped whatever it was they were doing and pointed their eyes at him.

"It's the warp jump signature of a mass of over a thousand megatons." Sapphire said. "It's the Zodiac."


	22. Chapter Twenty Two

Author Notes: It's been over a year since I last submitted a chapter for Gems of Tommorow --and several months since I last submitted a chapter for Digimon Rising--.

I know I've made excuse after excuse for doing this, and I've got a long list of them now. I could say that I've been distracted by life. I could say that I've been busy with college. I could say that my step-father accidentally threw away my entire stack of synopses for the next ten chapters of Lilo&Stitch and Digimon. All of those things would technically be true. But all of those things are things I could've worked around and kept writing anyway.

The real reason I've been so lackluster in publishing new Lilo & Stitch chapters is because... well... I've kind of drifted away from the characters over time. I quit SaveDisneyShows after Chris Sanders left Disney because I thought the show simply shouldn't continue without him, and my affections for the characters have grown distant over the past six months.

Given that, once I'm finnished here, I'm not entirely sure I'm even going to do Lilo & Patch at all.

* * *

The light was just enough for a human to see by, but was more than enough for the ones seeing. Each of them saw the machines in their arms and strapped to their groves in the wall. Lethal machines they were. One set of hands adjusted and oiled the moving parts of a magnetic mass driver fueled by blazing hot ions compressed into a kind of jelly. It was something between sleek and toy-ish, not having a single sharp angle to it. The other sets of hands all inspected and tuned similar weapons of different shapes, sizes, features, and ratios. But all had the same basic principles.

They were hand held plasma cannons, and the four being held were only a small part of the ones before them on wall. In addition to even more plasma cannons of more sizes and shapes and other things, there was a multitude of electronic hacking and cracking devices, remote controlled mines, electronic dampeners, plasma drills, and a load of other devices looking like they were pulled from the set of the latest space opera TV serial.

The little light inside flickered as the crack of close thunder reverberated through the alloy walls. The rain pounded so hard against the hull that it sounded like low rumbling static. Aside from the rain and thunder, the only sounds from outside were the occasional strikes of small branches or roof shingles against the hull. No one inside paid attention to these sounds. The focus was so intense that it was difficult to do so.

One of them sat on the floor in the middle of the chamber. He was light blue and smaller than the others. He looked up. He saw the furnishings contrasting the orange and red metal walls. There were curtains, couches, pillows, coffee tables, and lamps –even though the ship itself was more than capable of providing for it's own light–. It was the leftovers of trying to turn the ship into some kind of rental place for tourists. He snorted at the prospect. The ship was built for combat, not luxury.

He looked back down as his weapon. Everything was in perfect order. The casing was polished. The circuits were washed and the gears were scrubbed and oiled. A new power cell was plugged into the back, and there were four more on his bandoleer. He holstered the weapon on the same bandoleer and looked back up.

"There's only so many times we can clean and reassemble our equipment." Sapphire said. "And the more time we waste here, the closer the Zodiac's going to get, and the less time we'll have to pull off this… whatever the hell you call it"

Stitch looked up from his perch of a bluejean recliner shoved in the corner toward the back of the chamber. He was about ready to fit the last piece of casing on his plasma carbine.

"I know. I know." Stitch said, nodding his head. "Is just hard."

"None of us know if this is going to work." Emerald added.

Ruby held two rather large plasma carbines in her arms, along with a bandoleer full of power cells. She looked up from her seat on a coffee table in front of the couch.

"How many clones are gonna be there?" she asked.

Sapphire shrugged his shoulders. "With a ship that big… probably thousands. It doesn't matter though. There could be millions and that won't make a difference to the plan."

Stitch cocked his head to the side and furrowed his brow. His eyes narrowed and his ears perked up. Stitch was confused. He was not aware there was a plan. They never said there was going to be a plan and implied they were going to make up the mission as they went along. Why would they only now, when they were about to execute their mission, say they had a plan? There was only one reason Stitch could think of. They didn't want him to know what that plan was.

In spite of Stitch's attentiveness, the others ignored him. Emerald and Ruby focused all their attention on Sapphire.

Sapphire lowered his head and laid down his plasma pistol. He closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and drooped his ears down against his body..

Emerald and Ruby stared as if in shock at Sapphire, but something about them seemed to say they all expected… whatever it was that happened.

They stood up and walked to Sapphire. He didn't look up as they both wrapped their arms around him. Sapphire sighed as if from tedium, as if this had happened too many times before. Whether or not Ruby or Emerald noticed this, they did nothing about it except to keep hugging him.

Stitch was even more confused now. If the odds were against all of them, why would all the attention be focused on Sapphire? What did this plan have to do with him that would warrant this behavior? Whatever the case was, Stitch was certain they wouldn't explain it to him. There was only one thing to do at that moment that made any sense to him.

Stitch ran into the ship's cockpit and jumped onto a pilot's seat made for something at least four times bigger than him. Buttons and switches and dials and meters splayed out in front of him and above him and to his sides. He didn't pay attention to what any of them were as he'd memorized the takeoff procedure so well..

Stitch flicked switches, pressed buttons, and glanced at dials and meters. The ship began to rattle. A low roar echoed through the hull just before Stitch was rocked about in his chair, and had to grab the cushions with his claws to keep from being thrown off. The ship had lifted off the ground. As soon as it was over, the ride became smooth.

The flash of light through the windows and the lights flickered momentarily from a lightning strike to the hull. There would be many more during the ascent from Earth's atmosphere.

* * *

The rain was so thick the lights from the town could scarcely be seen. The sound was more like a blazing wildfire than that of rain. It drowned out everything but the frequent claps of thunder. It was fortunate that the rain blew away from the covered deck or else there would be no protection from being soaked. That was the only reason why Nani could have stood outside on the porch at all, even in her blue and black rainslicker.

Nani leaned against the wall next to the door. Her arms were folded tightly. She was the only one who dared be outside to watch the ship take off. She could barely see it by the glow of its engines, and couldn't hear it at all. Sometimes shingles or sticks or palm and paradise leaves blowing by would distract her. She paid no mind when some of them almost hit her.

As the ship lifted higher and higher, Nani could only follow by its feint engine glow, and could only clearly see its silhouette when a bolt of lightning struck the ship. After that, the image was gone. Nani stared far longer at the point in the sky where she last saw Jumba's ship. Eventually her gaze unfocused and her mind cleared of thoughts.

The wind started to weaken, and the rain began to pour more straight. Lines of water crawled around the drain on the patio cover and started dripping onto the porch, and onto Nani. She kept staring into that spot in the sky while more water dripped onto her. The winds picked back up, this time blowing the opposite direction, guiding the rain into the porch. The water sprayed against Nani then. She sighed at last and turned back toward the front door, and walked inside.

In the house, Nani unzipped her rainslicker and let it fall to the floor atop a puddle she was content to ignore. She was back in her usual tank top and khaki long-shorts outfit. She yawned and then sneezed as she was almost finished. She walked toward the hallway and stopped. She looked back toward the window. The occasional stick or palm or paradise leaf still battered it.. Water flowed down the window and Nani let out a split-second smirk. The sight reminded her of the water pouring down the windows in drive-through car washes. She sighed. Nani turned and walked toward her bedroom, but stopped and blinked.

"Lilo." Nani whispered.

Nani turned back and walked out of the hall into the kitchen, and from the kitchen into the laundry room. It was two thirty A.M., and as Nani walked the brief distance, her only thoughts were confirming Lilo's presence in the laundry room and then getting sleep. Of all residents still occupying their house, Nani was least aware of what was really at stake. In her mind, Stitch and his children would merely Apprehend their rodent enemy, and confiscate his ship, much like a cop arresting a man for drunk driving. This was despite what she had said to Lilo earlier. She didn't understand how true her words really were.

Nani reached the laundry room and furrowed her brow. The light was on, and the pile of clothes in the center of the room seemed to be empty.

"Lilo?" Nani asked.

Nani approached the pile of clothes and squatted over them. She picked up handfulls of clothes and threw them behind her. She was calm at first, but with each handful she became more frantic, her eyes grew winder, and her breath faster. As she ran out of clothes Nani clasped her hands and her jaw shut. Her eyes teared and her breath began to stutter.

Nani bolted upright and looked at the particle-board shelf above the laundry machines. Among disorganized boxes, bottles, and ragas was an open tin of boot blackener.

Nani grabbed her hair. "God dammit Lilo!" she screamed.

Nani turned and ran out of the laundry room, through the kitchen, into the living room, and into the door. In her panic, she held her hand out expecting to just push the door open. She slammed into it, hurting her wrist. Nani backed away growling and holding her right wrist in her left hand. Seconds later she grabbed the doorknob in her left hand and swung it open.

Nani turned her head to the side and shielded it with her hands as rain sprayed through the door, soaking her hair and her clothes with bitter cold. She huffed and charged out the door, nearly slipping on the wet patio before catching herself on the railing. She looked up again, at the same spot where the ship disappeared. Each breath was a gasp and she squeezed the railing so hard her fingers turned red. With the rain streaming down her face it was impossible to tell whether or not she was crying.

Two other figures emerged from the doorway into the pouring rain—Pleakly in one of Nani's pink, silk robes and Jumba in a black, terrycloth robe of his own.

"What is being racket about?" Jumba asked.

Nani turned around and grabbed Jumba's robe by the hems. "Lilo's in the ship!"

* * *

Stitch couldn't stop the stinging in the back of his neck, or at least that's what he thought it was. He knew there was nothing there but he swore he could feel it as if someone jammed a needle into him. It was Sapphire, his son. Stitch's daughters, as soon as they were in the ship they showered him with affection, and refused to say why.

Stitch blinked and came to consciousness of the stars he was looking at out the front window of Jumba's ship. The Zodiac was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the oval diode screen set between two control panels to his left. White with blue lines, the panel displayed data on time, place, and mass. Just as predicted, the Zodiac had come out of warp halfway between Jupiter and Saturn, and had just now passes Saturn. They had passed up Mars an hour earlier, and according to the time, they would intercept the Zodiac in the asteroid belt.

_I can modify it Jumba's ship on the way so we won't be detected._

Stitch remembered Sapphire's words and now understood them. He was going to alter the ship's magnetic signature to resemble an asteroid. Only after they've docked would the Zodiac detect anything out of the ordinary.

But what were they going to do once they got there?

"Sapphire." Stitch whispered.

Stitch shut his eyes and clenched his fists together. A single tear fell from his left eye and then he relaxed. Stitch huffed as if from boredom and let himself droop down in the seat. He knew from the very beginning what the others thought when they gave Sapphire so much attention. Their refusal to say why confirmed it. Whatever the plan was, they didn't think Sapphire would survive. He had to know for sure. He had to ask, but not directly.

Stitch pulled himself from the chair and dropped to the plate metal floor. The door to the cockpit slid open as he walked toward it, and finally exited the cockpit. In the hall, drapes were still hung over the windows and couches and chairs and the coffee table still decorated the ship as if it were still a mock hotel room. Ruby stood with her bandoleer and belt on her chair, looking out the window with all four of her hands on it. Emerald sat on the bluejean couch next to it with her own bandoleer and belt, with all of her tendrils retracted to a foot in length. Her arms were folded and her eyes closed. Neither of them looked like they were in any mood to talk.

Next to the coffee table, a plate had been removed from the floor, and Sapphire now worked on Jumba's ovoid latop with wires running from it into plugs on the massive caramel colored metal cylinder revealed from the removed plate. The cylinder was part of the ship's engines. Sapphire was modifying their settings to give off that particular magnetic signature.

Sapphire seemed only marginally more likely to talk than the others, but that was enough for Stitch.

Stitch approached Sapphire and sat down next to him. Sapphire briefly slowed his typing and glanced back at Stitch. Just as quickly he went back to his busy work. Stitch did not want to be the one to start the conversation, so he looked at Sapphire typing away. It was only then that Stitch realized just how much Sapphire seemed like a miniature version of himself. Sapphire wasn't even as tall as Bonnie, and appeared almost as frail as she did. He could life five hundred times his body weight, but that was only a fraction of Stitch's own strength, and an even smaller fraction of Ruby's.

Was that why Emerald and Ruby thought Sapphire would die? Because he wasn't as tough physically as Stitch or his daughters? If that was the case, why wouldn't they just make him stay in the ship?

"Sapphire stay in ship." Stitch said.

Emerald and Ruby both looked back and Stitch and Sapphire and then went back to what they were doing.

Sapphire didn't slow down his typing or look at Stitch as he talked. "That's what I'm going to do." He said.

Stitch's shoulders and ears drooped. He sighed and closed his eyes. A tension released in his body that he'd held for the last few minutes, and suddenly Stitch felt woozy for just a second. But if Sapphire was going to stay aboard, why didn't he acknowledge that the words comforted his father? Stitch perked up his head and ears. He looked at Sapphire with a cocked head.

"Gabaga?" Stitch asked.

"Someone has to monitor the mission from afar." Sapphire answered. "And someone has to be in the cockpit the moment you all get back. I'm someone."

Stitch sighed and drooped his ears. That wasn't the answer he wanted. Despite Sapphire's assurances that he wasn't going aboard the Zodiac, he still didn't look up, still didn't slow his typing, and still sounded somewhat angry. Stitch looked back at Sapphire with eyes narrow and face tight, a stern glare, even though Sapphire couldn't see it.

"Gaba wrong?" Stitch demanded.

That finally made Sapphire stop typing. Sapphire slumped forward, squeezed his eyes shut, groaned, and then huffed. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Naga!" Stitch shouted. "Gaba wrong?! Na!"

"Ishmuhflt." Sapphire mumbled incoherently.

Stitch growled at Sapphire, not a mean or threatening growl, but certainly a demanding growl. Sapphire understood. He reach forward and flicked the ovoid laptop closed with a claw. He looked up to Stitch. His glowered, his ears flattened against his head, and his eyes watered. Stitch's sternness melted away on seeing just how upset Sapphire seemed.

"It's my fault!" Sapphire shouted.

Emerald and Ruby both looked up from what their tinkerings with plasma carbines. Ruby raised a paw and opened her mouth to speak, but a tendril from Emerald pressed against her lips, silencing her.

"This is all my fault." Sapphire nearly whispered.

"How?" Stitch asked.

Sapphire took a long, deep breath and sighed on the exhale. He fell over onto his back with his arms stretched out to his sides. For a short time he laid motionless, staring up at the ship's ceiling. He then closed his eyes and tried to visualize the things he was about to say.

"It's my fault that Hamsterviel escaped." Sapphire whimpered. "We were in the Turo capitol building, the three of us, trying to sneak our way toward the Grand Council-Holder's office, where Hamsterviel made his business center. It was easy really, we just jumped one of the paper pushers and took over his delivery. The clones were too stupid to realize what we were; they just let us pass. Once we were in the office, there wasn't anything he could do to stop us. We thought about killing him, but it seemed a bit—primitive. So instead we tied him up, stuffed him into a shuttle, and sent it on a crash course into a deserted desert asteroid... the same one they were going to send you to actually. The shuttle was set to self destruct ten minutes after it crashed so he couldn't try to repair it and escape."

Sapphire bit his bottom lip as soon as he finished talking. He looked back toward the ovoid laptop and stared at it for some odd seconds. He reached over and pulled the laptop back toward him. He flipped it open with a claw and immediately resumed typing where he left off.

Stitch had heard that story before, everything up until that point. Sapphire obviously didn't want to finish it.

Stitch reached over and flicked the ovoid laptop closed with his own claw. Sapphire barely pulled his paws away in time to avoid the screen hitting his fingers. He jumped slightly and looked back toward Stitch. Sapphire was still biting his lower lip., but now he squinted and his ears pressed flat against his head. Stitch narrowed his eyes and folded his arms, demanding that Sapphire finish the story. Sapphire shook his head pleading not to have to, but Stitch nodded his, insisting.

Sapphire sighed. "Fine, have it your way." He said. "It was my fault that Hamsterviel escaped the asteroid. My calculations were perfect, perfect for him alone. As far as I could tell, there was less than a one in a hundred thousand chance that Hamsterviel would ever escape from his own wits. And I was right about that."

Sapphire clenched his hands shut. His eyes started to water and the fur down the middle of his back stood on end. Sapphire began to stammer as he continued.

"I was right about, about, Hamsterviel not being able to, not being able to, not being able, being able to escape on his, on his, his own. But I was stupid! Why did I even think he would always be alone?! Why'd I even, Why'd I even, even think that? Why the hell didn't I even consider the possibility?"

"Of what?" Stitch asked.

Sapphire snorted and swallowed. He came back with a tight frown and eyes squeezed shut. He went limp and let his head fall onto Stitch's shoulder.

Stitch nearly gasped from the gesture but clamped his jaw shut before he could. Stitch reached his hands out, but hesitated, squeezing and relaxing them in midair. Unsure of himself, Stitch looked up at the bluejean couch and chair. Emerald and Ruby both looked at Stitch and nodded.

Stitch let one hand fall to the side to help hold himself up. He brought his other hand down onto Sapphire's shoulder. Sapphire's breathing immediately became stuttered.

"Finish." Stitch said.

"Hamsterviel didn't escape on his own." Sapphire continued. "A small cargo frigate, a small cargo frigate landed so that they could, they could, they could repair it. Hamsterviel snuck onboard and, and stole it. I never calculated the odds that, someone else, someone else, someone else would land. I never even thought of it."

Stitch repeatedly looked up and down at Sapphire, Emerald and Ruby, the laptop, and to the side, unsure of himself. He looked up at Emerald and Ruby again and hed his gaze. Emerald waved a hand in front of Ruby to get her attention, and then whispered something in her ear. Ruby nodded. Emerald then hopped off the couch and approached Stitch and Sapphire. She laid two tendrils on Stitch's shoulder, prompting him to look up at her.

"I know you're not good at this dad." Emerald said. "Not yet at least. You should just go pilot the ship. Let me take care of Sapphire"

Stitch nodded. He lifted Sapphire to his feet and then stood up and walked toward the cockpit. As he went, Stitch stopped and turned to look at Sapphire again. He saw Emerald leaning her forehead against his. Stitch sighed and continued into the cockpit.

Once inside, Stitch beat his foot down on the ground outside the cockpit door, prompting the metallic orange door to slide shut with the sound of steam escaping. Stitch climbed the back of the pilot's seat and let himself somersault into a seated position once he reached the top.

Stitch glanced at the various displays and instrument panels just long enough to register what they said and then looked back into space. He sneered on one side of his mouth and squinted. He grabbed the fabric of the arm rests and dug his fingers into it. He stopped when he heard the fabric tear. He let go and squeezed his hands paws together. He'd recognized the signs; Sapphire had lied to him. The smell of stress –the smell of ammonia and burnt match heads– could be passed off by the crying, but not the brief moments's hesitation, or the refusal to make eye contact, or the twitches of the nose and ears. Sapphire's story may have been true enough, but that wasn't what upset him. Or at least it wasn't entirely what upset him.

In the hall, Emerald and Sapphire stared at the closed orange door to the cockpit. They both sighed and slumped their shoulders, as if releasing a hidden tension, now that Stitch was gone. They looked at each other again and then sat down across from each other.

"Did he buy it?" Emerald whispered.

Sapphire looked away from Emerald, toward the floor. "How should I know." He whispered back. "You're the miracle people reader. I'm crap at that."

Sapphire looked down at the floor and snarled. He threw his ears back and the hair on his back stood on end. He clenched his paws and slammed them onto the floor.

For a moment, Sapphire almost expected to simply punch through the floor and then tear away strips of metal like his father and sisters could do. All that happened was that he made a fist shaped dent in the floor, and then pulled his fist back to cradle in his other paw while he whimpered and bit his lower lip in pain.

* * *

It seemed impossible, but the rain had gotten even worse since in the time that passed. The water cascaded down the windows not in drops, but as if someone poured the water down them. The blazing sound of the rain had since turned into something more akin to an aircraft engine. And now, not even the thunderbolts could be seen directly, but only the glow in the struck areas surrounding them.

Only the ceiling light in the kitchen illuminated the living room. Nani paced back and fourth along the carpet just in front of the coffee table. One hand held up an elbow to the other hand where she bit down on two fingers. She still wore her soaked tank top and khaki shorts, sometimes dripping water onto the carpet. She stopped and squeezed her eyes and lips tight until her face wrinkled. She relaxed, sighed, and then turned toward the doorway.

Jumba and Pleakly, still in their robes, stood at the doorway to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Jumba glance over at Pleakly, who glanced back, before they both looked back at Nani.

"Is she gonna go into a mania and scream and attack us?" Pleakly whispered to Jumba.

"Hard to tell." Jumba whispered back. "Bigger girl is rarely predictable."

"What are you saying?" Nani asked.

Jumba and Pleakly snapped their attention to Nani. Her tone shocked them. She didn't seem angry and she didn't seem sad or even worried. Nani's voice was barely audible, and resembled the squeaking of a mouse. She only seemed tired, incredibly tired. This was confirmed when she turned to Jumba and Pleakly, seemingly barely able to hold her eyelids open or her knees stable. Even her breathing was so slow, as if she were asleep. Tumbe and Pleakly stood still, not changing their expressions or postures but to look at Nani.

"No, nevermind. I don't care." Nani squeaked. "I just want to... to lay down now."

Nani sighed, which eventually turned into a gurgle. She lumbered toward the couch and fell down onto it, shaking it against the floor. She swung her body to the side to lay down and draped her lower legs over the arm of the couch. She grabbed and yanked the pillow from behind her head and shoved it onto her face. She then let her arm fall limp off the side of the couch while her other arm lay across her waist.

"Don't bug me." Nani mumbled from beneath the pillow. "Don't bug me anymore."

Jumba and Pleakly looked at each other. Pleakly twiddled his fingers. Jumba tapped his foot. They looked back at Nani. Jumba frowned. He grabbed Pleakly by the collar of his robed and dragged him toward the kitchen. Pleakly hollered at this. He could barely keep his three legs in synch to avoid tripping from being dragged.

Nani grumbled from beneath the pillow in irritation at the nose.

Jumba released Pleakly when they had reached the Kitchen. In response, Pleakly turned toward Jumba and swatted his arms away. He backed away with a narrowed eye and a arms flailing through the air in a hopeless attempt to either intimidate or protest.

"What did you do that for!" Pleakly yelled.

Nani grumbled again in irritation at the noise.

Jumba grabbed Pleakly by the shoulder and held a finger to his mouth. "Being quite!" He whispered. "Bigger girl is in living room covered in pillow. She is not being able to hear us in kitchen if we whisper quiet enough."

Pleakly pushed Jumba's hand away. "Than why didn't you say that in the first place!" He yelled.

Jumba pushed his hand against Pleakly's mouth again. "That is being why!" He whispered and removed his hand. "Now be whispering very, very quiet-esque."

Jumba looked toward Nani. She still lay in the same position with her head beneath the pillow. Jumba motioned his head toward her. Pleakly shook his heand and shrugged his shoulders in response, clearly not understanding the message. Jumba rolled his eyes and motioned toward her twice. Pleakly again shook his head and raised his hands in confusion. Jumba finally huffed, grabbed Pleakly's head between two fingers, and turned it toward Nani.

"I wwas wanting for to be talking about bigger girl." Jumba whispered, and let go of Pleakly.

"Ohhh." Pleakly whispered back. "Yeah, I am kind of wondering why she's doing that."

"Bigger girl has no more family she is being in personal contact with." Jumba whispered. "No more family except for little girl. Little girl is all that is left for her."

"Than why's she just laying there like that? Why isn't she either screaming or crying or doing something else completely mental? I know I would."

"Because she is not wanting to be feeling anything right now." Jumba whispered. "She does not want to be feeling anything until she knows fur sure the fate of little girl. I just wanted to know, what could possibly be being said for this to her, which could make her listen?"

Jumba and Pleakly looked back at Nani. She hadn't moved from her previous spot.

"Well..." Pleakly whispered.

"Well what?" Jumba asked.

Pleakly brought his head down into his hand. For a time he held his chin while rubbing a finger up and down his jaw. For a time more he held his forehead, tapping the side of his head with the same finger. He finally looked up and Jumba and snapped his fingers.

"I have no idea whatsoever." Pleakly whispered.

Jumba groaned and let his head fall into his hand.


End file.
